It is well to discriminate carefully between a moral person and an apparently religious person. Too often it is assumed that a pious person is of necessity a safe moral guide. Sometimes unfortunately the teacher who appears religious is not morally sound.
True religion includes an approved morality. But, it must be understood that teaching religion does not necessarily indicate that good morals are being taught. The author does not mean to criticise the Sunday School, or even the Church—they are great and effective institutions—but they are failing to teach morals as they should. The school teacher has a great work to do at this point. The final admonition to the teacher is, have a standard moral code, live it, and in pointing others to it as a signboard of life, be sure to heed it always yourself.
Aesthetic Appreciation
A requisite of the teacher that cannot be overlooked is that he must have a love for all that is good and beautiful: an æsthetic appreciation. The teacher must appreciate and actually participate in the noblest, best and most beautiful which the world possesses in song and story, in conversation and poem, in landscape and sky, in art and music. The sky with floating clouds, or when clear or starbedecked, a silver moon hanging low over a dark-rimmed horizon, a towering cathedral against a sunset sky, a brook stealing its way across a meadow, a mountain torrent, a rainbow, the shadow and sheen in the depths of the forest, a placid river on its way to the sea, a bird song, a meadow, a field of ripening grain, a flower-hedged roadway, a path through the valley and into the depths of a wood where it winds at will among the mossy trunks of trees, over tufts of moss, beside quiet pools, through rustling leaves—all these and many more objects in nature hold in store inspiring and uplifting lessons of life. No teacher can contemplate these beauties and not possess a nobler soul. Contact with Nature’s most beautiful and best will strengthen his love for the beautiful and will help him to keep the hearts of his pupils attuned to the helpful sights and sounds that go to make up their surroundings.
The teacher who delights in the beautiful will find himself easily winning the interests and attention of his pupils. Children are born admirers of the beautiful.
“Constitutionally, he functions æsthetically just as really as he does socially, although not to the same extent. Very early in his history he manifests delight in beauty. The nature of these reactions will be explained as we proceed with the chapter. Because of them, education calls for the development of this aspect of the child’s nature, and ethical culture demands its moralization. Morality is especially concerned with æsthetic development, since there is an intimate relation existing between the beautiful and the good.”[[6]]
No teacher can have an appreciative love for all that is beautiful and good and not love children. The most beautiful thing in all the world is the unfolding life of a child. Who has not stopped by the side of the cradle and pushed aside a curl to look upon the face of a sleeping baby, whose long eyelashes are sweeping over cheeks aglow with beauty, the whole face portraying childhood’s charm. The first tottering steps of a child are deeply interesting. His gleeful prattle, his silver laughter are cheering to the most benighted. Could ever a human being think of becoming a teacher who does not love children above all else?
Every teacher should love and appreciate good literature and good music, and all that is beautiful in the arts. Whatever is cultural is æsthetic. The beautiful, the true, the good are all æsthetic and therefore profitable. Each day the teacher should renew and reinspire his soul and life by contact with all that surrounds him that is æsthetic. He must abhor wrong and love right. His character will then be strong and his life filled with success, joy and peace.
[6]. Sneath and Hodges, Moral Training in the School and Home, p. 167. Macmillan.