Craftsmanship in Teaching Part 11

It is a simple matter to construct in imagination an ideal teacher. Mix with immortal youth and abounding health, a maximal degree of knowledge and a maximal degree of experience, add perfect tact, the spirit of true service, the most perfect patience, and the most steadfast persistence; place in the crucible of some good normal school; stir in twenty weeks of standard psychology, ten weeks of general method, and varying amounts of patent compounds known as special methods, all warranted pure and without drugs or poison; sweeten with a little music, toughen with fifteen weeks of logic, bring to a slow boil in the practice school, and, while still sizzling, turn loose on a cold world. The formula is simple and complete, but like many another good recipe, a competent cook might find it hard to follow when she is short of b.u.t.ter and must shamefully skimp on the eggs.

Now the man whose history I have recounted represents the most priceless qualities of this formula. In the first place he possessed that quality the key to which the philosophers of all ages have sought in vain,--he had solved the problem of eternal youth. At the age of sixty-five his enthusiasm was the enthusiasm of an adolescent. His energy was the energy of an adolescent. Despite his gray hair and white beard, his mind was perennially young. And that is the only type of mind that ought to be concerned with the work of education. I sometimes think that one of the advantages of a practice school lies in the fact that the teachers who have direct charge of the pupils--whatever may be their limitations--have at least the virtue of youth, the virtue of being young. If they could only learn from my hero the art of keeping young, of keeping the mind fresh and vigorous and open to whatever is good and true, no matter how novel a form it may take, they might, like him, preserve their youth indefinitely. And I think that his life gives us one clew to the secret,--to keep as close as we can to nature, for nature is always young; to sing and to whistle when we would rather weep; to cheer and comfort when we would rather crush and dishearten; often to dare something just for the sake of daring, for to be young is to dare; and always to wonder, for that is the prime symptom of youth, and when a man ceases to wonder, age and decrepitude are waiting for him around the next corner.

It is the privilege of the teaching craft to represent more adequately than any other calling the conditions for remaining young. There is time for living out-of-doors, which some of us, alas! do not do. And youth, with its high hope and lofty ambition, with its resolute daring and its naive wonder, surrounds us on every side. And yet how rapidly some of us age! How quickly life seems to lose its zest! How completely are we blind to the opportunities that are on every hand!

And closely related to this virtue of being always young, in fact growing out of it, the ideal teacher will have, as my hero had, the gift of gladness,--that joy of living which takes life for granted and proposes to make the most of every moment of consciousness that it brings.

And finally, to balance these qualities, to keep them in leash, the ideal teacher should possess that spirit of service, that conviction that the life of service is the only life worth while--that conviction for which my hero struggled so long and against such tremendous odds.

The spirit of service must always be the cornerstone of the teaching craft. To know that any life which does not provide the opportunities for service is not worth the living, and that any life, however humble, that does provide these opportunities is rich beyond the reach of earthly rewards,--this is the first lesson that the tyro in schoolcraft must learn, be he sixteen or sixty-five.

And just as youth and hope and the gift of gladness are the eternal verities on one side of the picture, so the spirit of service, the spirit of sacrifice, is the eternal verity that forms their true complement; without whose compensation, hope were but idle dreaming, and laughter a hollow mockery. And self-denial, which is the keynote of service, is the great sobering, justifying, eternal factor that symbolizes humanity more perfectly than anything else. In the introduction to _Romola_, George Eliot pictures a spirit of the past who returns to earth four hundred years after his death, and looks down upon his native city of Florence. And I can conclude with no better words than those in which George Eliot voices her advice to that shade:

"Go not down, good Spirit: for the changes are great and the speech of the Florentines would sound as a riddle in your ears. Or, if you go, mingle with no politicians on the marmi, or elsewhere; ask no questions about trade in Calimara; confuse yourself with no inquiries into scholars.h.i.+p, official or monastic. Only look at the sunlight and shadows on the grand walls that were built solidly and have endured in their grandeur; look at the faces of the little children, making another sunlight amid the shadows of age; look, if you will, into the churches and hear the same chants, see the same images as of old--the images of willing anguish for a great end, of beneficent love and ascending glory, see upturned living faces, and lips moving to the old prayers for help. These things have not changed. The sunlight and the shadows bring their old beauty and waken the old heart-strains at morning, noon, and even-tide; the little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty; and men still yearn for the reign of peace and righteousness--still own that life to be the best which is a conscious voluntary sacrifice."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: An address to the graduating cla.s.s of the Oswego, New York, State Normal School, February, 1908.]