Craftsmanship in Teaching | Page 8

second is the ideal of science,--the
pledge of devotion to that persistent unwearying search after truth, of loyalty to the great
principles of unbiased observation and unprejudiced experiment, of willingness to accept
the truth and be governed by it, no matter how disagreeable it may be, no matter how
roughly it may trample down our pet doctrines and our preconceived theories. The
nineteenth century left us a glorious heritage in the great discoveries and inventions that
science has established. These must not be lost to posterity; but far better lose them than
lose the spirit of free inquiry, the spirit of untrammeled investigation, the noble devotion
to truth for its own sake that made these discoveries and inventions possible.
It is these ideals that education must perpetuate, and if education is successfully to
perpetuate them, the teacher must himself be filled with a spirit of devotion to the things
that they represent. Science has triumphed over superstition and fraud and error. It is the
teacher's duty to see to it that this triumph is permanent, that mankind does not again fall
back into the black pit of ignorance and superstition.
And so it is the teacher's province to hold aloft the torch, to stand against the materialistic
tendencies that would reduce all human standards to the common denominator of the
dollar, to insist at all times and at all places that this nation of ours was founded upon
idealism, and that, whatever may be the prevailing tendencies of the time, its children
shall still learn to live "among the sunlit peaks." And if the teacher is imbued with this
idealism, although his work may take him very close to Mother Earth, he may still lift his
head above the fog and look the morning sun squarely in the face.
FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: An address to the graduating class of the Oswego, New York, State Normal
School, February, 1907.]

II OPTIMISM IN TEACHING[2]
Although the month is March and not November, it is never unseasonable to count up the
blessings for which it is well to be thankful. In fact, from the standpoint of education, the
spring is perhaps the appropriate time to perform this very pleasant function. As if still
further to emphasize the fact that education, like civilization, is an artificial thing, we
have reversed the operations of Mother Nature: we sow our seed in the fall and cultivate
our crops during the winter and reap our harvests in the spring. I may be pardoned,
therefore, for making the theme of my discussion a brief review of the elements of
growth and victory for which the educator of to-day may justly be grateful, with, perhaps,
a few suggestions of what the next few years may reasonably be expected to bring forth.
And this course is all the more necessary because, I believe, the teaching profession is
unduly prone to pessimism. One might think at first glance that the contrary would be
true. We are surrounded on every side by youth. Youth is the material with which we
constantly deal. Youth is buoyant, hopeful, exuberant; and yet, with this material
constantly surrounding us, we frequently find the task wearisome and apparently hopeless.
The reason is not far to seek. Youth is not only buoyant, it is unsophisticated, it is
inexperienced, in many important particulars it is crude. Some of its tastes must
necessarily, in our judgment, hark back to the primitive, to the barbaric. Ours is
continually the task to civilize, to sophisticate, to refine this raw material. But,
unfortunately for us, the effort that we put forth does not always bring results that we can
see and weigh and measure. The hopefulness of our material is overshadowed not
infrequently by its crudeness. We take each generation as it comes to us. We strive to lift
it to the plane that civilized society has reached. We do our best and pass it on, mindful of
the many inadequacies, perhaps of the many failures, in our work. We turn to the new
generation that takes its place. We hope for better materials, but we find no improvement.
And so you and I reflect in our occasional moments of pessimism that generic situation
which inheres in the very work that we do. The constantly accelerated progress of
civilization lays constantly increasing burdens upon us. In some way or another we must
accomplish the task. In some way or another we must lift the child to the level of society,
and, as society is reaching a continually higher and higher level, so the distance through
which the child must be raised is ever increased. We would like to think that all this
progress in the race would come to mean that we should be able to take the child at a
higher level;