When I was a boy I was set by my father to the task of dipping all the water out of a spring-hole in the hay-field. I performed the task faithfully, thinking that the object was to empty the hole. But the next day I was obliged to tell my father that the task had gone for nothing, as the hole was as full as ever. I had merely removed certain accumulated impurities, which was the real object of the work.
So we often toil with definite objects
in view when all the while Providence is
at work through us at a very different
and always a more important task. We
may be disappointed that we have not
emptied the hole, or we may more wisely
rejoice that we have freshened the
spring.
(3173)
Taste and Propriety Violated—See Missionaries' Mistakes.
Teacher, A Young—See Child Religion.
TEACHER, THE COMPETENT
I am reminded of a remark made to me
recently by a gentleman in middle life, a
very excellent carpenter, whom I saw watching
my boys, twenty-four of them, at work
making their first weld in the forging shop.
He seemed intensely interested as he watched
one of the young men at his work. I said:
"You seem to like to see the boys work. Do
you understand what they are doing?"
"Yes," said he, "I worked a year once in a
blacksmith shop." "Well," said I, "then I
suppose this operation of welding is a very
simple matter to you." "Not at all," said
he; "I never made a weld in my life. I
never got a chance. I kindled the fire and
blew the bellows, and I did some striking for
other men; but they never let me try to make
a weld." Then he added, with a good deal of
feeling, "These boys learn more in one week
about the really essential art of forging than
I learned in half a year." And the secret
of it is they have a thoroughly skilled workman
who is competent both to teach and to
demonstrate every principle involved.—Calvin
M. Woodward, "Journal of the National
Education Association," 1905.
(3174)
TEACHER, THE IDEAL
Dr. Ernest Fox Nichols, the new president of Dartmouth College, gives this bit of classic advice to teachers:
In twenty years of teaching and observation,
I have become convinced of some things
connected with teaching as a profession. No
teacher can hope to inspire and lead young
men to a level of aspiration above that on
which he himself lives and does his work.
Young men may reach higher levels, but not
by his aid. The man in whose mind truth
has become formal and passive ought not to
teach. What youth needs to see is knowledge
in action, moving forward toward some
worthy end. In nobody's mind should it be
possible to confuse intellectual with ineffectual.
Let it not be said:
We teach and teach
Until like drumming pedagogs we lose
The thought that what we teach has higher ends
Than being taught and learned.
It ought to be impossible, even in satire, to say, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."
(3175)
TEACHER, THE IDEAL, AT WORK
In the photographic studio it is not enough
to have a favorable light, expensive lenses,
and the latest arrangement of shutters and
slides. It is not enough to have fair women
and brave men before the camera. It is not
enough to have a perfect plate, ready to respond
to the faintest ray of light; there must
also be a skilled operator, who shall moderate
the glare, arrange the shadows, measure
the distance, adjust the instrument, calculate
the exposure, pose the sitters, engage the attention,
and at the psychologico-photographic
moment spring the shutter.
In like fashion the artist-teacher deals with his carefully sensitized pupil as he prepares to take a picture worth developing. Deftly he arranges each detail and improves every condition; then he unveils before him some image of truth and beauty wrought by skilful hands and eagerly awaits the results. If he succeeds, he knows it without troublesome delay. He glances swiftly about his class, detecting here and there a pupil who responds, "his rapt soul sitting in his eyes"; and the instructor glows with the consciousness that his labors have not been in vain.—D. O. S. Lowell, "Proceedings of the Religious Education Association," 1905.
(3176)
TEACHERS, ALERTNESS OF
It is an interesting commentary on the
earnestness and professional zeal of the
teachers as a class, that they are in such
