Good Wine in Old Bottles

by Msgr. Paul E. Campbell, M.A., Litt.D., Ed.D.

Teachers may stress unduly the factor of recency in choosing or consulting works on education. When a work on any phase of education is eight or ten years old, it is apt to become a museum piece. We should ask ourselves why. The essentials of school management, for instance, are stated just as fully in many of the older books in that field as in the books that have succeeded them. To the writer it was refreshing to page through a 54-year-old volume¹ whose purpose is stated as the giving of the "practical and concrete presentation (of school management) so that the young teachers may gain confidence in their ability to conduct and control a school, and, at the same time; possess a correct theory of school management."

The volume was written with teachers of long experience also in view, for their pedagogical practices will be far more effective when they are sure of the ground on which they stand. Through such a volume as this it is hoped that veteran teachers may be helped to conform the management of their schools to sound educational doctrine. The author himself is filled with admiration for exemplary teachers of an earlier day, and there is no doubt when we consider the length and quality of his own experience that his name must be included on the roll of outstanding teachers. His book is proof of this.

He opens his volume with the statement of a maxim, "As the teacher is, so is the school." It is his conviction that the greatest work that can engage the thought and invite the activity of man is the education of the young. Upon the doing of this work well depends the future welfare of the individual, the home, the community, the nation, the world. Sound teaching in a nation's schools contributes mightily to the moral and religious tone of the nation. It is the function of the school to develop a high sense of intellectual and social responsibility; to impart noble ideals and lead a people on to higher levels of civilization. The needs of the citizen demand that educators constantly strive to elevate the standard of intelligence and morality in society. If the future citizen is to develop the traits that make for high citizenship, the school must offer him training and leadership.

The teacher must have the proper concept of his high calling. The work of teaching is a great opportunity joined with a great responsibility. He must take up the work with enthusiasm, thoroughly convinced that he has an opportunity to do great things for the child, and to do them more effectively than any other agency. The words of Froebel are to the point here. Speaking of his first experience as a teacher, he wrote: "It seemed as if I had found something I had never known, but always longed for, always missed; as if my life had at last discovered its native element." Pestalozzi was offered high positions, but he persevered in his desire to teach: "I want to be a schoolmaster."

This Is the Good Teacher

Every beginning teacher must ask himself certain key questions and seek to determine whether he possesses the qualities essential to a teacher. Our author rates as the first qualification of a teacher that he be genuine, whole-souled, honest, manly, true. If he lack any of these qualities, his children will discover it. "There may be lack of approved method, there may be dearth of knowledge, there may even be weak discipline, but none of these is so fatal as a lack of honest manliness." Genuine character is the first requisite in him who would teach the young. In the words of Emerson: "How can I hear what you say, when what you are is continually thundering in my ears?" "The spirit of the teacher is more than his method," declares Lowell, "and that person is the most valuable in the schoolroom who fills it with sweet reasonableness." We like these words of Felix Adler: "The personality of the master of the school is the chief factor of moral influence in it."

In all his work the teacher has need for patience, sympathy, and love for children. The "daily instance" of the teacher is filled with trials, discouragements, and difficulties. Only the divine gift of patience can make the work tolerable. Most of the children in any class are good, but they are mischievous, restless, full of life, and find it hard to submit to the necessary curbs of school discipline. Supreme patience may overcome even the ill will of the vicious child. The Greatest Teacher of all time has given us the example of sublime patience in dealing with those who refuse to accord with our work in their behalf. If a teacher fail in patience, he is wanting in that love for childhood and sympathy with its interests that are essential to his work. His love and sympathy bring his heart in touch with the heart of the child, enable him to reach its inner life, and thus contribute to all phases of the child's development.

A happy disposition augurs success for the teacher. If he has a forbidding countenance and a hard and rigid manner he creates an atmosphere that is inimical to all progress. Sarcasm, faultfinding, and bitterness make the five hours of the school day a torture to teacher and pupils alike. Let us concede that there are days in the schoolroom that "try men's souls." Even on this type of day the teacher must have the power to rise above external conditions and radiate cheerfulness and good will. A wise superintendent was wont to insist that the qualities of disposition that make young women sought for as wives, are the very characteristics required in teachers. The sunny disposition of the teacher is as pervasive as the great virtue of charity, for it "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things" (1 Cor. 13, 7). This great virtue in the teacher brings a blessing and a benediction to all who come under his influence.

The teacher must be free from any physical impediment that would interfere with his usefulness. Teaching is arduous work and requires a high degree of physical stamina. Our author recommends a physical examination, and today that is a requirement. "The teacher should possess reserve strength to rise above the petty annoyances that are sure to come, and to preserve equanimity of temper and manner . . . Strength of body gives consciousness of power, both in preserving order and in imparting instruction." Without vigorous health it is difficult to maintain cheerfulness, vivacity, fertility of resource, and interest. Chronic ill health unfits one for the work of teaching; justice to children demands good health on the part of the teacher.

The teacher must be capable of thinking and speaking clearly and logically. Remediable defects should be removed from his vocabulary, for the accuracy of one's thinking is profoundly conditioned by the accuracy of his vocabulary. He who would teach must be able not only to see a truth clearly, but must possess also the power to impart it to others. As the young teacher grows in mastery of an adequate vocabulary, he develops the power to grasp the essentials of any lesson and make them stand out vividly before the pupils. Christ again is the pattern that the teacher should follow. In a study of the vocabulary of the Gospels it is found that the words most often used by Christ in His teaching are the simple concrete words, such as serpent, fish, wine, seed, lily, servant, talent, net, needle, bottle, barn, fox, mustard, oil, sparrow. No teacher should use words beyond the comprehension of the class unless he pauses immediately to explain them.

The Teacher Must Be Altruistic

The life of the ideal teacher is characterized by a yearning for the good of others. In this he follows the example of Christ Himself, who "went about doing good." His is the noblest example of altruism in the history of the world, for He gave His life for others. Selfish motives will nullify the efforts of even the best-trained teacher. His supreme law must be the welfare of others. His efforts to promote the welfare of others make the teacher a benefactor of mankind.

The traits and qualities we have enumerated make for a "strong personality that impresses itself forcibly, effectively, and permanently upon the minds and hearts of those whom he teaches." His disinterested altruism gives him a spirit of consecration that makes his work noble; his task sublime. From the clear statement of Pope Pius XI in his encyclical, "Christian Education of Youth," we know that teachers must possess the intellectual and moral qualifications required by their important office; must cherish a pure and holy love for the youths confided to them, because they love Jesus Christ and His Church, of which these are the children of predilection; and must have sincerely at heart the true good of family and country. Something more is necessary. They must be thoroughly prepared and well grounded in the matter they have to teach. This calls for a sound foundation of general knowledge, a knowledge of many subjects besides those which he is to teach.

"Education has been defined," writes our author, "as the process of canceling the difference in knowledge that exists between two persons, between teacher and taught. Now, if the difference is slight, the learner has but little to hope for; while if the difference is great, the possibilities that await the learner are just so much the greater." Standards of teacher preparation are founded on the knowledge and experience of school administrators. No one may assume that the untrained novice will teach as well as the thoroughly equipped teacher. It is a mistake to think that "anyone will do for little children." The teaching of young children is a task demanding the utmost skill and tact and knowledge and professional fitness. Our author very wisely says that if unskilled teaching must be employed anywhere, let it be with older children who can think and act for themselves, and who do not depend so much on the teacher. The greatest danger in faulty methods occurs in the case of very young children.

Professional Requirements: Then and Now

Fifty-four years ago our author stated that the least academic training the teacher should possess is that of the full high school course or its equivalent. Broad academic training gives him a reserve force, a breadth of outlook, and a comprehensive view of the whole matter of the education of the child. A broader culture than the high school requirement is indicated for teachers of the advanced grades. Even in 1903 the ideal of a college education for every teacher was beginning to take hold. An excellent foundation of general culture, together with a thorough mastery of the academic knowledge of subjects, was strongly recommended.

It is, of course, true that a teacher cannot teach all he knows, but his knowledge of more advanced material than he is attempting to teach gives him a confidence and an ability that he would not otherwise possess. His general cultural knowledge makes a teacher free to encourage his pupils to ask questions; increases his power to illustrate; enables him to distinguish the important from the unimportant; insures his interest in his subject, and thereby tends to develop interest in his pupils; and, finally, gives him courage to say, "I don't know." (Adapted from Fitch's Lectures on Teaching and Gordy's Growth and Development of the Normal School Idea.)

Teaching is a profession, and special technical training is required in the practice of it. It is as reasonable to put a sick child into the hands of a young man without any medical training on the ground that he has graduated from college, as to put the pupil into the hands of a college graduate without professional training in the science and art of teaching. Professionally trained teachers of today may be astonished to learn that an educator of yesteryear, two generations ago, recommended that "the professional training of the teacher should consist of a study of psychology and child study, history of education, methods of teaching, school management, school law and school economics, practice-work, and philosophy of education." The experience of the classroom puts the finishing touch on excellent professional training.

Teacher's Stature in the Community

The candidate for a teaching career should not enter lightly upon the work of teaching. Teaching is the noblest of all human endeavors, and is a great responsibility as well as a great privilege. Every teacher in the community's schools is an important personage in the community. If he is properly prepared for his work, he merits the esteem and gratitude of the beneficiaries of that work, namely, the entire community. He is entrusted with the community's most precious possession and resource, its children. Parents who entrust their children to him should take him to their hearts and homes. The teacher of high moral standards is a potent influence for good. As a cultured gentleman he is trained in the refinements of polite life. He has upon him the evidence of an education, among which are the refined and gentle manners that are the expression of fixed habits of thought and of action. He is by no means a social butterfly, but he should possess the ease and the politeness and the courtesy which fit him to associate with the best of men. He is and should be sociably acceptable in any community.

The teacher's position makes it mandatory for him to make himself a safe moral guide for the children committed to his care. His close contact with children places him in a commanding position in building up for his charges an environment wherein they can grow into Christian gentlemen and Christian gentlewomen. His personal example carries great influence with his young charges who look to him for leadership in all phases of Christian living. Nothing can relieve the teacher from his personal moral responsibility.

It is stimulating for every teacher to read the fine paragraph that our author has written on the function of the teacher as a force in the things of the spirit.

Nor does the influence of the teacher always cease with morals. Without a particle of sectarian instruction, without any direct allusion to religious life and practice, by his own belief in sacred things, by his spirit of reverence for God, by his (reverent) attitude towards religion while in the school, and his active participation in its duties out of school, the teacher becomes a mighty force for spiritual teaching. I have known teachers whose lives were such that no other man in the community exercised so powerful and direct an influence for religion as they. And there was not a parent of whatever creed that did not feel that the education of his children was in safe hands.

The Teacher's First Concern

Everyone is aware that the teacher bears a responsibility for the physical well-being of his pupils. He must establish in the classroom hygienic conditions that promote health or at least do not put it to hazard. On him rests the burden of eternal vigilance in maintaining good ventilation, correct temperature, right seating of the pupils, elimination of drafts and exposure, and, in general, of all hazards to health. Good health is fundamental to the best performance of school assignments. Intelligent physical training mitigates and sometimes corrects certain deformities of the body, and brings "all parts of the body under the absolute control of the will, which Rosenkranz defines as the object of physical culture."

The teacher's first thought is for the welfare of the pupils. During school hours the teacher stands in place of the parent, and he counsels correct health and safety practices for children in their hours out of school. He can promote proper dietary habits through incidental instruction, and for generations schools have essayed to give children proper instruction in diet and general health. Our author gives an example of a teacher in Leipsic who taught children in season and out of season not to eat bread until it is twenty-four hours old. This and other precautions have a great and salutary effect upon the health of children, and, through them, of the general population. The teacher is in a key position to ingrain in the child habits of temperance in eating and drinking. Ever on the alert to detect signs of sickness, the teacher gives warning of its incidence in good time to avert serious results. When a teacher discovers defects in eyesight or hearing, proper measures will be made to cure or relieve these defects.

There is growing realization of the teacher's part in promoting the intellectual and moral well-being of the child. In furthering the pupil's intellectual life, no teacher may neglect his moral development. He cannot allow a moral lapse to pass without comment. Circumstances may require him to stop all other work and give a lesson in morals. His vigilance in correcting moral evils creates in the minds of his pupils a respect for the moral quality of their own lives. When the home or other education agencies neglect their duty in the moral education of children, the school becomes a mighty factor in establishing moral habits and moral ideals. The direct influence of a consecrated teacher is of great value in this phase of education.

The qualified teacher knows the kind of mental food that the children need. An approved course of study and a daily program are handed to him by the principal, and he follows the directions there given. But through his professional knowledge, his methods of instruction, and his comprehensive view of the whole field of education, he is fitted to advise as well as to teach his pupils. He awakens in them a zeal for knowledge, a love of intellectual pursuit, and an eager longing for the truth. When he has imparted to them a love of learning, a knowledge of how to acquire learning, and directed them to the sources of learning, he must rely on their consistent, well directed self-activity to achieve learning. It is true that the teacher must check on their activity and their achievements through examinations, monthly reports, and other approved means, but the surest indication of the possibility of progress is the interest manifested by the pupils themselves in their studies and their consequent intellectual growth.

It is a source of joy to one who guides the young to witness their physical, intellectual, and moral development. As he watches them grow and expand, the teacher is filled with pardonable satisfaction. He is pleased when he finds that his pupils can do today what they could not do yesterday, and he asks for no greater reward than the success of his work as manifested in the lives of those he has tried to lead to learning. If he can secure a balanced development of all the powers of the individual, he has done his duty.

Teacher Is a Supplement, Not Substitute, for Parents

The school supplements and extends the educational function of the home, but the primary right and the primary responsibility continue to rest with the parent, the first teacher of the child. It accomplishes in a more effectual way the task of education for which the parent, as a rule, has neither the time, the means, nor the requisite qualifications. By its discipline as well as by explicit instructions, the school must imbue its pupils with habits of virtue, but it should not, through any of its ministrations, lead the parent to believe that having placed his children in school, he is freed from responsibility.

"It is the duty of the teacher," writes our author, "to keep in close touch with the parents, to inform them of the progress or the serious misconduct of their children, and of all other matters of vital interest to them. In these things there should be perfect frankness . . . The cooperation of parents should be invited by frankly taking them into full confidence in all important matters. Surely no one should be more interested in the welfare of the children than their own parents. Through periodical reports parents should be informed of the work and deportment of their children, and, when necessary, these should be followed up with personal explanations." Public meetings of parents with teachers are an excellent means of keeping parents in close touch with their children's progress or lack of it.

Our cullings from Doctor Seeley's volume, despite its age, convince us that the fundamental truths of education have not changed.

Note

A New School Management, by Levi Seeley, Ph.D. (Hinds, Noble & Eldredge, New York; 1903).

© Joseph F. Wagner, Inc.

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