Craftsmanship in Teaching | Page 6

me hasten to add that these men claim no especial merit for their altruism and
unselfishness. They do not pose before the world as philanthropists. They do not strut
about and preen themselves as who would say: "See what a noble man am I! See how I
sacrifice myself for the welfare of society!" The attitude of cant and pose is entirely alien

to the spirit of true service. Their delight is in doing, in serving, in producing. But beyond
this, they have the faults and frailties of their kind,--save one,--the sin of covetousness.
And again, all that they ask of the world is a living wage, and the privilege to serve.
And that is all that the true craftsman in education asks. The man or woman with the
itching palm has no place in the schoolroom,--no place in any craft whose keynote is
service. It is true that the teacher does not receive to-day, in all parts of our country, a
living wage; and it is equally true that society at large is the greatest sufferer because of
its penurious policy in this regard. I should applaud and support every movement that has
for its purpose the raising of teachers' salaries to the level of those paid in other branches
of professional service. Society should do this for its own benefit and in its own defense,
not as a matter of charity to the men and women who, among all public servants, should
be the last to be accused of feeding gratuitously at the public crib. I should approve all
honest efforts of school men and school women toward this much-desired end. But
whenever men and women enter schoolcraft because of the material rewards that it offers,
the virtue will have gone out of our calling,--just as the virtue went out of the Church
when, during the Middle Ages, the Church attracted men, not because of the
opportunities that it offered for social service, but because of the opportunities that it
offered for the acquisition of wealth and temporal power,--just as the virtue has gone out
of certain other once-noble professions that have commercialized their standards and
tarnished their ideals.
This is not to say that one condemns the man who devotes his life to the accumulation of
property. The tremendous strides that our country has made in material civilization have
been conditioned in part by this type of genius. Creative genius must always compel our
admiration and our respect. It may create a world epic, a matchless symphony of tones or
pigments, a scientific theory of tremendous grasp and limitless scope; or it may create a
vast industrial system, a commercial enterprise of gigantic proportions, a powerful
organization of capital. Genius is pretty much the same wherever we find it, and
everywhere we of the common clay must recognize its worth.
The grave defect in our American life is not that we are hero worshipers, but rather that
we worship but one type of hero; we recognize but one type of achievement; we see but
one sort of genius. For two generations our youth have been led to believe that there is
only one ambition that is worth while,--the ambition of property. Success at any price is
the ideal that has been held up before our boys and girls. And to-day we are reaping the
rewards of this distorted and unjust view of life.
I recently met a man who had lived for some years in the neighborhood of St. Paul and
Minneapolis,--a section that is peopled, as you know, very largely by Scandinavian
immigrants and their descendants. This man told me that he had been particularly
impressed by the high idealism of the Norwegian people. His business brought him in
contact with Norwegian immigrants in what are called the lower walks of life,--with
workingmen and servant girls,--and he made it a point to ask each of these young men
and young women the same question. "Tell me," he would say, "who are the great men of
your country? Who are the men toward whom the youth of your land are led to look for
inspiration? Who are the men whom your boys are led to imitate and emulate and

admire?" And he said that he almost always received the same answer to this question:
the great names of the Norwegian nation that had been burned upon the minds even of
these workingmen and servant girls were just four in number: Ole Bull, Björnson, Ibsen,
Nansen. Over and over again he asked that same question; over and over again he
received the same answer: Ole Bull, Björnson, Ibsen, Nansen. A great musician, a great
novelist, a great dramatist, a great scientist.
And I conjectured as I heard of this incident, What would be the answer if the youth of
our