If this good record is maintained as the years go by, no friend of the University need fear that it will not continue to grow in the helpful esteem and confidence of a generous people. For after all, the rank and value of this Institution will be measured, not by the size of its buildings, nor by its collection of books and apparatus, nor even by the eminence of its Faculty, but by the conduct and careers of those whose intellects and characters have been trained and formed under its direction and discipline. And if each year adds to the number of young men and women who, going from these halls into the every-day walks and ways of human endeavor and duty, win for themselves honorable and respected names, the reflected lustre of their usefulness and exaltation will shine upon this building as does the sun in his daily journey—the glad morning of their triumphs bathing it with brightness, the full noontide of their worth and renown flooding it with warmth and splendor, and the majesty of their declining years shedding upon it the gratitude of a reverent benediction.
THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL.
Address to the graduating class of the State Normal School, delivered at Emporia, June 11, 1885.
Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: In one sense, at least, the State Normal School is the most important of our higher educational institutions. The others educate, each year, a number of individuals, and necessarily a limited number, who are, individually, to fill various positions on life’s battle-field. The State Normal educates the educators, and thus by its influence, its system, its method and thought, reaches and shapes the minds of many thousands. There were, last year, 8,342 teachers in the public schools of Kansas, and they controlled and instructed an army of 308,600 children—an army larger than Grant, or Napoleon, or Wellington ever commanded; an army far more difficult to direct than were theirs; an army whose drill, discipline and instruction will exercise, through all the coming years, a larger and a far more important influence over the material and intellectual well-being of humanity than did the victories of these great commanders.
The office of teacher has not, until late years, been regarded as other vocations are. Men were educated in law, or medicine, or theology, or learned the trades of craftsmen, because they expected to make practical use, during their life-time, of the knowledge and skill they acquired. But men and women drifted into the school-room as teachers—and in too many cases still do so—not because they expected to make teaching their business, but because, for the time being, they could find nothing else to do. Many of these teachers were and are, undoubtedly, well qualified for educational work; many of them have achieved marked success in this work, and, growing to like it, have continued in it. But many others, and far the largest number, I fear, of those who engage in teaching as a mere temporary make-shift, do not fairly earn even the poor salaries they are paid. No one can succeed at anything if he does not put his heart and mind into his work. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,” is a lesson which the teacher must take to heart, or his or her teaching will come to naught.
And surely there can be no more important work than that of an educator in the schools. Year by year this fact is strengthening in the public mind, and as a result the teacher is growing in public appreciation and pecuniary value.
The underlying spirit, the clear purpose of the State Normal, is not to educate lawyers, or doctors, or ministers, or tradesmen, but to educate, train and fit men and women for the profession of public educators. They who enter this Institution with any other purpose in view, are guilty of a fraud on the generosity of the State. The General Government educates young men, at West Point and Annapolis, for the army and navy. There is no law which compels them, after graduation, to enter either branch of the service. But there is an unwritten code which, appealing to their personal honor, is stronger than any statute, and which compels these graduates of the Nation’s schools to serve two years in its army or navy. They may then resign, but in the event of war, they must promptly tender their services to the Government.
Some such code of ethics should govern graduates of the State Normal. They are educated by the State, as teachers, for the purpose of elevating the standard and qualifications of its public educators, and they should feel in honor bound to fulfill this implied personal obligation.
And surely there can be no nobler ambition than to be a really great teacher—such a teacher, for example, as Arnold of Rugby, or Horace Mann. To rule and shape human minds, to mould and fashion children and youth for the highest and noblest duties of life—is not this a work which should enlist in its service the best heart and brain of all the land?
Last year, in a quiet hamlet in Pennsylvania, an old man died. For more than sixty years he had been a teacher. He had taught in nearly every district of the county where his long and useful life was spent, and half the men of that county, under sixty years of age, have been his pupils. More fully than any other person I have ever known, he was my ideal of what a school master should be—the controlling spirit of a school; its master literally, as well as in name; a firm, strong, just man, encouraging the diffident, punishing the vicious, and inspiring all. Fully six feet in stature, angular, with immense reach of arms, large hands, a noble height and breadth of forehead, and steel-gray eyes sparkling under bristling eye-brows, the heaviest that ever adorned a human face—he was, in the school-room, a formidable figure. Even the later-day “hoodlum,” with his reckless impudence, would have regarded him with awe. He was a strict disciplinarian. He had no mawkish sentimentality about corporal punishment. He delighted, I think, to deal with a vicious, disobedient boy—one of the half-animal and wholly perverse kind, as full of cruelty and meanness as an egg is of meat. When one of this class was enrolled among his pupils, it was wonderful how soon all the perversity of his nature was reduced to subjection.