Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/427

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SCHOLARSHIP AND TEACHING.
407

one: "We have no more educators in the true sense of the word."[1] The opinion of Professor Paulsen is especially worthy of notice. We summarize what he says on this subject in his History of Higher Education. It cannot be doubted that scholarship of the teacher, as a rule, tends towards raising teaching. But it should not be overlooked that the success of a teacher depends not only upon the amount of his scientific knowledge, but as much on his inclination and practical skill for teaching. Do the latter qualities increase in proportion with the teacher's scholarship? This is not always the case. It should be expected that, the richer, the clearer and the deeper the knowledge is, the stronger the inclination, and the facility of imparting it to others. But between philological scholarship proper and elementary instruction in Latin grammar and style, we find rather the reverse proportion. Scholarship can become an obstacle to teaching. First, it weakens the liking for it, or rather it strengthens the aversion to it. For the "drilling" in the elements of a language is undoubtedly one of the least attractive tasks to a man who feels in himself an inclination to educate the souls of the young. – Secondly, scholarship easily leads to introducing into class-instruction things that are important for the teacher's own scientific grasp of the subject. Hence the common complaint: the more grammar and the study of antiquities increase, and the more deeply the teachers enter into these sciences, the less the pupils learn; or rather the more the pupils learn of these things, the less thoroughness and facility they acquire

  1. Lehmann, Erziehung und Erzieher, Berlin, Weidmann, 1901. – Neue Jahrbücher, 1901, vol. VIII, p. 237.