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
There are different sorts of example. I may observe how the shopman does
up a package, and do one so myself the next morning. A companion may
have a special inflection of voice, which I may catch. I may be drawn to
industry by seeing how steadily my classmate studies. I may adopt a
phrase, a smile, or a polite gesture, which was originally my teacher's.
All these are cases of direct imitation. Some one possesses a trait or
an act which is passed over entire to another person, by whom it is
substituted for one of his own. Though the adoption of such alien ways
is dangerous, society could hardly go on without it. It is its mode of
transmitting what is supposed to be already tested and of lodging it in
the lives of persons of less experience, with the least cost to the
receivers. Most teachers will have habits which their pupils may
advantageously copy. Yet supposing the imitated ways altogether good,
which they seldom are, direct imitation is questionable as disregarding
the particular character of him in whom the ways are found and in
assuming that they will be equally appropriate if engrafted on anybody.
But this is far from true, and consequently he who imitates much is, or
soon will be, a weakling. On the whole, a teacher needs to guard his
pupils against his imitable peculiarities. If sensible, he will snub
whoever is disposed to repeat them.
Still, there is a noble sort of imitation, and that school is a poor
place where it does not go on. Certain persons have a strange power of
invigorating us by their presence. When with them, we can do what seems
impossible alone. They are our examples rather as wholes, and in their
strength and spirit, than in their single traits or acts; and so
whatever is most distinctive of ourselves becomes renewed through
contact with them. It was said of the late Dr. Jowett that he sent out
more pupils who were widely unlike himself than any Oxford teacher of
his time. That is enviable praise; for the wholesomeness of example is
tested by inquiring whether it develops differences or has only the
power of duplicating the original. Every teacher knows how easy it is to
send out cheap editions of himself, and in his weaker moments he
inclines to issue them. But it is ignoble business. Our manners and
tones and phrases and the ways we have of doing this and that are after
all valuable only as expressions of ourselves. For anybody else they
are rubbish. What we should like to impart is that earnestness,
accuracy, unselfishness, candor, reverence for God's laws, and
sturdiness through hardship, toward which we aspire--matters in reality
only half ours and which spring up with fresh and original beauty in
every soul where they once take root. The Dependent Fellowship of a
school makes these larger, enkindling, and diversifying influences
peculiarly possible. It should be a teacher's highest ambition to
exercise them. And though we might naturally expect that such inspiring
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