The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on EducationPalmer, Alice Freeman
Philosophy
The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on Education
Palmer, Alice Freeman
Education; Education, Higher; Women -- Education
But the two qualifications of the teacher already named will not alone
suffice. I have known persons who were sympathetically imaginative, and
who could not be denied to possess large intellectual wealth, who still
failed as teachers. One needs a third something, the power to invigorate
life through learning. We do not always notice how knowledge naturally
buffets. It is offensive stuff, and makes young and wholesome minds
rebel. And well it may; for when we learn anything, we are obliged to
break up the world, inspect it piecemeal, and let our minds seize it bit
by bit. Now about a fragment there is always something repulsive. Any
one who is normally constituted must draw back in horror, feeling that
what is brought him has little to do with the beautiful world he has
known. Where was there ever a healthy child who did not hate the
multiplication table? A boy who did not detest such abstractions as
seven times eight would hardly be worth educating. By no ingenuity can
we relieve knowledge of this unfortunate peculiarity. It must be taken
in disjointed portions. That is the way attention is made. In
consequence each of us must be to some extent a specialist, devoting
himself to certain sides of the world and neglecting others quite as
important. These are the conditions under which we imperfect creatures
work. Our sight is not world-wide. When we give our attention to one
object, by that very act we withdraw it from others. In this way our
children must learn and have their expansive natures subdued to
pedagogic exigencies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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