Teaching will be good art when the child's growth is a perfect fit to
the uses of his life, when subject-matter brings to him influences he
needs and can use. Teaching will be good art when it breaks up old
habits, starts new ones, strengthens good traits, and weakens bad
ones; when it gives a new attitude of cheerfulness in life or of
thoughtfulness for others or of reason in all things. It will be good
art when under it the child wants to do something and learns _how_ to
do it. Teaching will be great art when under it the child continually
attains self-activity, self-development, and self-consciousness, when
he continually grows so that he may finally contribute his utmost
portion to the highest evolution of the race. Teaching will be great
art when it touches the emotions of the child,--when history calls
forth a warm indignation against wrong, when mathematics strengthens a
noble love of truth or literature creates a strong satisfaction in
justice. This is the poetry of teaching, because mere subject-matter
becomes a criticism of life. Teaching will be great art when you, the
teacher, through the humble means of your presentation of
subject-matter, furnish the child at the same time with ideas,
perceptions, and opinions which are your personal criticism of life.
Teaching will be great art when you, the teacher, have worked up into
your own character a portion of life which is of value, so that the
child coming in touch with you knows an influence more powerful than
anything you can do or say. Teaching will then awaken in the child a
social relation of abiding confidence, of secure trust, of faith
unshakable. And this relation will then create for the teacher the
obligation to keep this trust inviolable, to practice daily, _noblesse
oblige_. Teaching will be great art when with the subject-matter the
artist gives love, a great universal kindness that thinks not of
itself but, being no respecter of persons, looks upon each child in
the light of that child's own best realization. This penetrating
sympathy, this great understanding, will call forth from the child an
answering love, which grows daily into a larger humanity of soul until
the child, in time too, comes to have a universal sympathy. This is
the true greatness of teaching. This it is which brings the child into
harmony with the Divine love which speaks in all God's handiwork and
brings him into that unity with God which is the mystery of Froebel's
teaching.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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