Craftsmanship in Teaching | Page 7

land were asked that question: "Who are the great men of your country? What type of
achievement have you been led to imitate and emulate and admire?" How many of our
boys and girls have even heard of our great men in the world of culture,--unless, indeed,
such men lived a half century ago and have got into the school readers by this time? How
many of our boys and girls have ever heard of MacDowell, or James, or Whistler, or
Sargent?
I have said that the teacher must take the vow of service. What does this imply except
that the opportunity for service, the privilege of serving, should be the opportunity that
one seeks, and that the achievements toward which one aspires should be the
achievements of serving? The keynote of service lies in self-sacrifice,--in
self-forgetfulness, rather,--in merging one's own life in the lives of others. The attitude of
the true teacher in this respect is very similar to the attitude of the true parent. In so far as
the parent feels himself responsible for the character of his children, in so far as he holds
himself culpable for their shortcomings and instrumental in shaping their virtues, he loses
himself in his children. What we term parental affection is, I believe, in part an outgrowth
of this feeling of responsibility. The situation is precisely the same with the teacher. It is
when the teacher begins to feel himself responsible for the growth and development of
his pupils that he begins to find himself in the work of teaching. It is then that the
effective devotion to his pupils has its birth. The affection that comes prior to this is, I
think, very likely to be of the sentimental and transitory sort.
In education, as in life, we play altogether too carelessly with the word "love." The test of
true devotion is self-forgetfulness. Until the teacher reaches that point, he is conscious of
two distinct elements in his work,--himself and his pupils. When that time comes, his
own ego drops from view, and he lives in and for his pupils. The young teacher's
tendency is always to ask himself, "Do my pupils like me?" Let me say that this is beside
the question. It is not, from his standpoint, a matter of the pupils liking their teacher, but
of the teacher liking his pupils. That, I take it, must be constantly the point of view. If you
ask the other question first, you will be tempted to gain your end by means that are
almost certain to prove fatal,--to bribe and pet and cajole and flatter, to resort to the
dangerous expedient of playing to the gallery; but the liking that you get in this way is
not worth the price that you pay for it. I should caution young teachers against the
short-sighted educational theories that are in the air to-day, and that definitely
recommend this attitude. They may sound sweet, but they are soft and sticky in practice.
Better be guided by instinct than by "half-baked" theory. I have no disposition to criticize
the attempts that have been made to rationalize educational practice, but a great deal of
contemporary theory starts at the wrong end. It has failed to go to the sources of actual
experience for its data. I know a father and mother who have brought up ten children

successfully, and I may say that you could learn more about managing boys and girls
from observing their methods than from a half-dozen prominent books on educational
theory that I could name.
And so I repeat that the true test of the teacher's fidelity to this vow of service is the
degree in which he loses himself in his pupils,--the degree in which he lives and toils and
sacrifices for them just for the pure joy that it brings him. Once you have tasted this joy,
no carping sneer of the cynic can cause you to lose faith in your calling. Material rewards
sink into insignificance. You no longer work with your eyes upon the clock. The hours
are all too short for the work that you would do. You are as light-hearted and as happy as
a child,--for you have lost yourself to find yourself, and you have found yourself to lose
yourself.

V
And the final vow that I would have these graduates take is the vow of idealism,--the
pledge of fidelity and devotion to certain fundamental principles of life which it is the
business of education carefully to cherish and nourish and transmit untarnished to each
succeeding generation. These but formulate in another way what the vows that I have
already discussed mean by implication. One is the ideal of social service, upon which
education must, in the last analysis, rest its case. The