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
know something of it, but in our evolutionary time nothing of that kind
is possible. Each thing is an epitome of the whole. Have you been
training your eye to see a world in a grain of sand? Can you look
through your specialty out upon the total universe and say: "I am a
specialist merely because I do not want to be a narrow man. My specialty
is my telescope. Everything belongs to me. I cannot, it is true, turn to
it all at once. Being a feeble person I must advance from point to
point, accepting limitations; but just as fast as I can, having mastered
those limitations, I shall cast them aside and press on into ever
broader regions."
But I said specialization was fundamentally justified through the
organization of society, because by its division of toil we contribute
our share to the total of human knowledge; and yet the popular objector
declares that we are presumptuous, and because we have mastered our own
specialty we are apt to assume ourselves capable of pronouncing judgment
over the whole field. Undoubtedly there is this danger; but such a
result is not inevitable. The danger is one which we are perfectly
capable of setting aside. The temper of our mind decides the matter, and
this is entirely within our control. What is the use of our going forth
presumptuous persons? We certainly shall be unserviceable if we are
persons of that type. That is not the type of Charles Darwin in biology,
of William James in psychology, of Horace Howard Furness in Shakespeare
criticism, of Albert Michelson in physics. These are men as remarkable
for modesty and simplicity as for scholarly insight. The true
characteristic of a learned specialist is humility. What we want to be
training ourselves in is respect for other people and a sense of
solidarity with them. Our work would be of little use if there were not
somebody at our side who cared nothing for that work of ours and cared
immensely for his own. It is our business to respect that other man,
whether he respects us or not. We must learn to look upon every
specialist as a fellow worker. Without him we cannot be perfect. Let us
make ourselves as large as possible, in order that we may contribute our
little something to that to which all others are contributing. It is
this coöperative spirit which it should be ours to acquire. And it seems
to me that you are under peculiarly fortunate circumstances for
acquiring it. What strikes me as fatal is to have a group of young
specialists taken and trained by themselves, detachedly, shut off from
others. Nothing of that sort occurs here. Every day you are rubbing
shoulders with persons who have other interests than yours. When you
walk to dinner, you fall in with a comrade who has been spending his day
over something widely unlike that which has concerned you. Possibly you
have been able to lead him to talk about it; possibly you have gained an
insight into what he was seeking, and seen how his work largely
supplements your own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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