If the pupil is to enjoy logical and consistent development in expression, he must be taught along psychological lines. Teachers should never lose sight of the fact that what is good for one pupil is not always good for another. It is impossible to set down a set of rules which will govern alike all pupils. Only that teacher is worthy of the name who recognizes that every pupil presents more or less a separate problem.
Teacher’s First Great Task
The teacher’s first important task is to render the pupil rightly disposed. Some pupils are at once extremely anxious to be governed by the wisdom of their teachers, while others are skeptical and must serve an apprenticeship in imitation. Still others are perverse and must be coerced. It is the patient and long-suffering teacher whose highest hopes will be realized.
What Is Expression?
What is expression? We are told that all life is expression: The sudden summer shower, the leap of the wild cataract, the springing forth of early flowers, and the slow motion of the glacier all represent Nature expressing herself. The musician over the keyboard, the painter at his easel, the writer at his desk, represent art expressing herself. This is all true. But what about mankind as a whole, what about the vast majority of people who are not endowed with genius? Have they no universal and common mode of expression?
Greatest Educational Value
Here lies the great educational value of oral reading, of expressive speech. Their appeal should be universal and not confined to a talented few. It were better that those who have native ability were wholly neglected and allowed to express themselves in their own way, than that the vast majority have no training at all. It is the ungifted who should be aided rather than those who have been especially endowed by Nature.
The Desire to Express
The desire to express is common to all humanity from infancy to old age. The true aim of education should be to “draw out” that which is within us; in other words, to express ourselves—physically, mentally and spiritually. The world’s great personalities are those who have the greatest freedom of expression. They have mastered the power to reveal their inmost selves. They have profited by the truth that through exercise we grow. So we should continually aim to free those channels through which we communicate ourselves to the outside world, in order that our highest faculties be unshackled and be given perfect freedom.