Page:The Teacher's Practical Philosophy.djvu/21

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INTRODUCTORY
9

incurring close-fitting responsibilities, would be looked upon as an object of envy. Professors, who have become emeritus and have been placed on a Carnegie foundation, are supposed to have attained the conditions for a perfectly happy life, here below, if not hereafter. They no longer have to teach; they are no longer under obligation to a presidential boss, or to a remote and not well-informed board of trustees or a corporation. But I assure you, my friends, that this in most cases is only because the person concerned does not love to teach, or is consciously unfit in body or mind to continue the work of teaching. A large measure of the firm and close-fitting sense of obligation—if only we could respect its source—conduces, in general, to the happiness as well as to the efficiency of the teacher.

Other important advantages come to the professional teacher in the work of education, from the fact that he has been especially trained for just this work. To be sure, there still lingers in many parts of this country, which is apt to boast so inordinately of the special attention which it gives to education, the practise of committing the work of education to persons who have had little or no professional training. But in the country at large, the demand for such training is rising; and we may hope that the time is not eternally distant when an untrained person will be no more acceptable in the profession