LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 019 747 863 9 The Dignity of the Common School Teacher's Mission. AN ADDRESS Delivered before the Minnesota Educational Association Dec. 29, 1891. BY / ^ / REV. SMITH BAKER, D. D. //^36a MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. SCHOOL EDUCATION COMPANY. 1S92. Copyright 1892. School Education Company. THE DIGNITY OF THE COMMON SCHOOL TEACHEE'S MISSION. BY REV. SMITH BAKER, D. D. To a New England born man there are few more pleasant memories which come like dreams of the past to fill with pictures of delight his conscious hours, than those of the country school house where he first en- tered the humble paths which have led to all his after years of culture. It was entering a new form of life. The house itself had an unspeakable mystery and sacredness. The first teacher was like no other woman, the first master like no other man. They woke up or covered up the budding desires of the mind. And then the boys and the girls who went with us, played with us, recited with us, sat with us upon the hard benches, read with us, spelled and mispelled with us, went to the head and then, to the foot, fired paper balls with us, whispered with us, sat on the "easy seat" with us, snow pelted with us, slid down hill with us, went to spelling school with us, walked home with us, flirted with us and exchanged notes and ap- ples with us, in all the joyousness of country purity. Do boys and girls have so good a time now as we used to have around that old one-story brick school- house which for sixty years has been the little wicket gate through which the children have entered the temple of education? God bless the old New Eng- land school house ! God bless the common school house everywhere ! It is the poor boys friend and the nation's hope. Some of you remember when you first became a school-master in one of those old New England towns, thirty-five or forty years ago. That first school you taught! What a school it was! I remember mine, because of the coincidence of a certain number. I was sixteen years old; the school was sixteen miles from my home; there were sixteen families in the district — the school was sixteen weeks long and I had sixteen dollars per month for teaching it. I boarded around two da3'S to a scholar and the largest num- ber of children from any one family was eight, so that the longest time I boarded at any one place v/as sixteen days, and there was in the family a sixteen year old Yankee girl. How hard I worked. It was a good school, the best I ever taught. I remember caUing at the close of the first week upon an old sea- captain who had six children in the school and in the presence of all his family — he said "Master, how do the children behave?" I told him "finely." "Wall,'' said he, "If they don't, don't you whip them. Don't you whip them. You maul them !" They were splen- did scholars. The old New Englano country village school was an institution very peculiar. School committees and supervisors did not govern as they now do, but they turned the master Hke a gladiator into a den of young animals as much as to say — "Now handle them if you can!" I recollect engaging one such school and when I went before the committee to be examined, the first question was: "If you were at the north pole which way would you go to go north ?" and the second question was — How are your muscles? and when I answered, they were in a fair condition, the reply was "That will do, go in and we will pay the damages." For the first two days we had some old fashion g^^mnastic exercises, not with stuffed sand bags but with real Yankee muscle, and after that it was lovely for twelve weeks, for there was a nobility about the roughest of those farmer boys and they respected the master when he was master, as every- body does, and they despised the master when he is only a "sissy" as ever3'body should. I call your attention this evening to THE DIGNITY OF THE COMMON SCHOOL TEACHER S MISSION. This thought refers both to the effect of the work upon the teacher and its results upon the state. Our idea of any work gives quality to our methods and character to its fruits. The commonness of our com- mon schools like the commonness of all our most essential and greatest blessings causes the unthinking mind to forget their high value and true dignity. How much any work is to us or the community, from the blacking of boots to the presiding over a nation depends upon our ideas of its importance and high- ness. Some street sweepers make their work more honorable than some bank presidents do theirs. Some auctioneers make their office more noble than some ministers because they bring into it all the best of their manhood. Some primary teachers exalt and dignify their A, B, C, instructions more than some college presidents do theirs because they do their foundation work with higher ideas of its im- portance. To bring out all the beautiful possibilities of the smallest lily is greater work than to retard the growth of a mountain oak. To make a beautiful image from a piece of lead is nobler work than to disfigure an image of gold. To awaken thought in the dullest mind, is an hundred times higher achievement than to merely hear a genius memorize. When the uni- versity professor only hears a student recite he is doing a small work compared with the country sum- mer school teacher who makes a boy feel he must go to college. To awaken thought is higher work than to teach facts. Too much of what has been called an education has been the stuffing of the mind as our mothers used to stuff the thanksgiving-goose and the result has been about the same. A loaded memory is not true culture. The gift of memorizing and the power to think are not the same, hence the boys who pass the best examination when they graduate frequently make the weakest men. To hear boys and girls recite is not teaching them. Cramming is not de- velopment. A school should not be a mental candle mold but a garden where each mind shall reveal its own individuality; hence the art of teaching is as im- portant as a knowledge of what is to be taught. An half educated teacher who knows how to do his work is worth more than learned dullness. Not can you pass an examination but can you wake up the pupils mind. This is the first thought in the dignity of the common school teachers work. She has not one special pupil to whom she can devote her energies, whose mental tendencies she can study and who taking by the hand, she can lead alone in some single path up the hill side of mental development, or has she like the college professor a select few whose minds have been turned into the same path and who have a common interest in one special study. But she has every form of m-ental tendency from all varieties of social life w^ho come to her without awakened minds or an intelligent choice of what they wish to learn and with only the dimest idea of what it means to study but who are there because they are required to come. Not images like the col- lege student, half-formed to be polished but the uncut blocks of marble in which she is to find an image. This is the greatness of the common schoolteachers art, that she is to discover and awaken possibilities for some one else to culture. She cannot be a spe- cialist with one mind, or one kind of mind, or one branch of study, but she must have the genius of teaching and be able to sweep the whole key board of mental tendencies. Excuse the illustration when I say that preaching is the highest art of speaking, for while the lawyer at the bar has twelve men at near the same age to whom he speaks on a special*theme, and the senator has a body of his peers whom he addresses, and the politician has an audience of men, citizens witli liim- self, and the scientific lecturer has a special theme and a picked audience with a common interest, the preacher has all classes, the old and young, the cul- tured and ignorant, the sad and the happy, the good and the bad all in one place and he is to preach to them all at the same time, hence the preacher's art is the highest of all speaking arts and it requires more of a man to make a good preacher than to be any other kind of a speaker. So, because the common school teacher begins at the beginning, takes her pupils in the rough arid un- sought variety and must discover the tendencies and aptitudes of each one, yea, because she must adapt her individuality to fifty other individualities at the same time, and be fifty teachers at once, it requires more genius to be a good common school teacher, than to be any college professor in the world. This its dignity, that it gives scope for the best brain, the best heart and quickest invention. The dignit}' of the common school teacher is also in the superior importance of her work to the State. We do not undervalue the work of the college and the university. As civilization deepens and broadens, they will multiply in number and expand in their facilities. The higher culture must ever reach to that which is still higher. "The reading of God's thoughts over after Him," — out in all directions up among the stars, from world to world, and system to system throughout limitless space, down into the earth, unlocking her mysteries, m3^stery inside of mys- tery until the greatness of littleness is as wonderful as the vastness of immensity. The contem_plation of the laws of human thought as real as the laws of the rocks and trees and higher and deeper and more mysterious — the relation of man to man in all that pertains to the home, the state and the nation. The ethical, moral and spiritual questions all ending in the mystery of God himself, yea, the whole universe of facts and truth and laws, whose morning light seems to be just dawning upon the thinking world, these all make our higher institutions of learning as nec- essary watch towers where men shall stand and note the onward march of God's plans in nature, mind and grace and where men shall be fitted to lead their fellow men up the hill sides and on to the mountain peaks of human knowledge and revealed truth. Let the nation, the state and church found and en- dow these universities and colleges, that the poorest boy and girl shall have an open path to the highest development of all the powers God has given them and let every youth in the land be encouraged to the 9 fullest improvement of the highest opportunities pos- sible and I have no doubt the time will come when as the result of statesmanly forethought, individual philanthropy and Christian consecration, our land will lead the world in the number and character of her universities and colleges and the opportunity for the broadest culture. We rejoice in all this, still it remains true, that more important than all these are the common schools. We could afford to abolish our state universities but could not afford to abolish our common schools. These are at the foundation. They are the foundation in two respects : ( i ) The number and quality of stu- dents who avail themselves of the higher education, depends upon the character of the teaching in the common schools. They are the feeders. Good teaching awakens an ambition for more education. Good works always leadi to better works. Good farming to better farming, good art to higher art, good common school education creates a thirst for higher education. Good teaching opens the Mdn- dows of the soul to gleams of greater light beyond. The beginning of most boys ambition for the col- lege was not at the college but from some teacher in the common school or academy who woke up his mind, to see that life is more than living, that know- 10 ledge is power. Give us better common schools and our colleges will be crowded. (2) The common school is the foundation, because the safety, strength and prosperity of a republic depends, not upon the higher education of few but the common inteUigence of the masses. As efficient and popular as our higher institutions may be, nineteen-twentieths of our peo- ple will never enter them but will graduate from the common and the high school and, these nineteen- twentieths will not only comprise the great body of our so-called working people but the majority of our business men, merchants and contractors, bankers and officers in the city, town, state and church. In a democracy the common people rule. Every man and in the time to come, every woman also will be a politician. How intelligent, how broad minded, nine- teen-twentieths of our voters shall be depends upon the character of our common schools. New England's broad solid intelligence in the past has not depended upon her Harvard or her Yale, noble as their work has been, but upon the high character of her common schools, scattered upon her hill sides, where her boys and girls learned to think, and her farmers and carpenters and shoemakers had a broad level of intelligence which demagogues could not lead blindfold — yea, to-day, not Harvard governs 11 New England, but her common school house?. So it ever must be in a free state and a free church. Their strength must rest upon the high average intel- ligence of the common people. You must heat your water by building 3'our fire at the bottom. You must educate your nation by good schools for the common people. This, then, the dignity of the mission of the com- mon school teacher; that she is at work upon the foundations, and helping more to decide the charac- ter of the future state than any other secular teacher. It is a matter of profoundest gratitude when such a man as Mark Hopkins or the honored president of our own State University is giving directions to the closing school years of our educated young men and young women, but it is a matter of more importance and greater gratitiide when one thousand men and women are shaping aright the opening tendencies of a hundred thousand bo3^s and girls. It may be an humble school house on a back road, but in it may be a boy whom you should start for college or for the presidency. The greatness of Ole Bull's art was, not that he could take his perfect violin and make other artists listen but that he could take a ragged boy's cracked fiddle and make the street urchins cry at his music. So the greatness and dignity of the teacher's mission is seen in how much she can wake up of the slum- bering immortality of the common child. Hers is not to polish diamonds but to find them. Hers, not to finish cultivation but to open its doors. She is the John the Baptist of teaching, and our Lord said that of Spiritual teachers none were greater than John the Baptist. So of secular instructors none are greater than the faithful common school teacher. I once asked an old sailor why he did not send his boys to school. He replied that they did not have '■'•hm-ning enough to get an education with.'''' The glory of the American common school system is that any poorest boy and girl shall have education enough to go on learning. He shall have that greatest of all opportunities, a common school education which shall be a key with which he can unlock for himself any department of learning made for the human mind. We must remember that in a land like ours the edu- cated and cultured men and women are not confined to our universities but are to be found among the common school and high school graduates who have kept on "reading God's thoughts over after Him," reading for themselves, seeing for them- selves, hearing for themselves, and thinking for themselves, expanding their minds, and hearts 13 by a continued contact with nature, men and God. It is pedantic conceit which speaks of education and culture limited to those who have had the advant- ages of the higher courses of study. Humanit}^ asks snot where did a man graduate, but what does he know — what does he think, what can he do. It makes one indignant to hear certain veneered minds speak of Abraham Lincoln, as an uneducated man. When the truth is, that for clearness of mental perception, for breadth of observation, for logical thinking, for accuracy of expression, for depth of comprehension and height of vision, in all that comes from an ex- panded, rounded and elevated mind not one univer- sity man in five thousand was his equal. He was an illustration of the opportunity, possibility and dignity of our common school w^ork in its humblest form. (3) The dignity of the common school teachers mission includes its reflex influence upon the teacher. All true work lifts the worker more than the worker lifts the w^ork. Every great picture has done more for the soul of the artist than for any other thousand souls. Powers' Greek Slave developed the soul of Powers more than the matchless statue developed any other soul. A great singer b}'' her singing quickens her own nature more than she stirs any other heart. 14 Every great speaker moves and thrills himself more than he blesses any of his hearers. When any work becomes incarnate in us, then its greatest result is upon ourselves. Any work one does which does not make more of a man of him is either DOor work or poorly done. Boot-blacking done with heart and brain develops the manhood. Intelligent farming develops the farmer more than it develops the farm. There is no small work when one sees the interrogation points hanging all about it. Motherhood most develops womanhood, because it touches with its greatness and duties every part of woman's nature. It cultures not only the mother but the woman more than the mother. When one sinks his manhood in his work, then he is a poor workman. The minister whose preaching does not expand his manhood more than it expands the minister is a poor minister. The min- ister who is only a minister is a cheap minister. So with a carpenter unless making houses makes more of a man of him he is only a machine. Thus good teachmg teaches the teacher more than it teaches the pupils. It develops the teacher more than it de- velops the scholar. Every good work is worthy being done without pay because of its results upon him who does it. 15 Nothing great was ever done for wages, no great song or picture was ever written or painted for money. They were the overflows of souls who must work out v/hat God was working in them. A teacher who simply hears children recite, will grow less of a man or woman until he withers into a machine, like a cir- cus clown or a magic lantern lecturer, repeating the same performance, but the living teacher though he remain in the same humble school for a generation, will, like a tree grow broader and higher and deeper each year. His teaching will expand his manhood. Teaching is not a service for the state but an op- portunity to reveal how much of thinking, inventing manhood and womanhood there is in one. And, as all merely mechanical work, rises in dignity in pro- portion as it taxes the ingenuity of the worker. As to make a watch brings out the powers more than to dig a ditch, so teaching rises in dignity above all other secular work, in that to lead the commonest child into the commonest branches of education calls into exercise and develops the highest faculties of the soul. Teaching is drawing out, and no artist when he sits down at some great organ has half so great an op- portunity not only to draw out the possibilities of the organ but the music in his own soul as the common- est teacher in the commonest school house has to 16 draw out the possibilities of a dozen children and re- veal the powers of her own mind. Yes, that which most lifts the worker, is the most dignified of work. (4) The dignity of the common school teacher's mission is seen also in the opportunity which it gives of impressing one's own individuality upon others.. This is the greatness of the poet» the singer, the ora- tor, the painter, the sculptor, the architect, the com- mon mechanic and greatest of all, of the teacher. To impress one's own idea of truth of nature, of life upon another is the most God-like mission given to* man. To have others the clay and we the potter, to have others the rough marble and we the sculp- tors, to have others the many — stringed instruments and we the soul-inspired artists — such the high call- ing of every common school teacher. This is not mere sentiment or poetry but earnest truth — that a teacher's power is in his or her individuahty. In this respect the teacher is creative. He rises from the mere carpenter to the architect — from the com- mon dauber of paint to the portrait maker — from the imitator to the inventor. He may teach only the same old common rules of arithmetic and grammar but it: will be new teaching. He may not be so fine a. scholar, may not know as much but he will teach, better. It is not eccentricity but individuality with- 17 out which learning is tame, teaching is dull; but with which common truths are clothed in beaut3\ We all remember such teachers. They became our ideals — we remember them because with the most of us two or three teachers have made us what we are. The others only heard us recite our lessons, we have forgotten them, but we recollect after almost fifty years, the face, the voice of the primary teacher who made spelling a delight and reading a pleasure and somehow made us love the school. I presume she knew less than some others but somehow it seemed as though hat — dog — cat^ meant more with her than with any one else and when we came to words of two, three and four syllables, why, what music she put into them. It seemed as though there was music in them because she was a born teacher. Her work was an incarnation in her life. And then you remember when you were in that betwixt and between condition out of the common school and in the high school, fitting for college, you had teacher and teachers who heard you recite, but you have forgotten all, save some one, who helped you find the sweet oyster in the hard shell of the Latin grammar. He helped you find your own brains — taught you how to use them and make study a new thing to you. 18 The iji'eat work of the teacher is not to hear les- sons but to wake up the pupils' powers, and this skill of mental leadership is more than scholarship — it is the personalities of the teacher. Arnold of Rugby, Mark Hopkins of Williams, were no riper scholars or better men than thousands of others, but they were not imitators. They had an individu- ality of method which lifted their pupils as an artist lifts us by the dignity of their own consecrated per- sonality. Lastly, the dignity of the common schoolteacher's mission is in its unconscious character building. It mayseem difficult to discriminate between individu- ality and character but in the sense now used indi- viduality refers more to one's method and character, to what one is; both form and personality of the teacher. A rose has both color and fragrance. In- dividuality is the light, character is the heat. It is the unconscious influence of the truth incarnate in the individual. It is that which gives power to all culture, to all methods and all individuality. It is what one is. I am not speaking as a preacher but as a fellow teacher. The principle thing is realness to be what we would have our pupils be. Nowhere else is af- fectation more useless, powerless or repulsive than in 19 the school-room. To be in the presence of some teachers is an education. A repulsive teacher is a poor teacher. A teacher whose silent example, man- ners, temper or spirit awakens unpleasant or evil thoughts, is a failure. A sarcastic, patronizing, nar- row, partial and unkind teacher should never be al- lowed in a school. A teacher who will twit a dull boy of his dullness should be sent to the reform school. The teacher is an object lesson which the child, the youth, and the young man reads. Some of you have stood before some great master painting; perhaps it was Raphael's Virgin and the child. How it stirred your soul with an idea of pure, living, loving character. Every teacher is a picture — eyes are following her; she is silently imparting ideas of hfe. Every teacher should be such a man as we want our boys to be, such a woman as we want our girls to be. No teacher can help being a character builder. What he is im- parts itself to others. The teacher of my bo}^ is do- ing more for my boy by what he is than by what he says. There can be no greater thought than this, that I am the ideal of manhood or womanhood to others; that I am the most important book they study. It is fearful — it is grand — it gives dignity to the humblest 20 teachers work, it makes of any common school house a temple into which one feels like entering with un- covered head as in the presence of the unseen, for there God's images are being cultured and trained. God is making of our land a great seething pot of humanity into which he is melting into the recogni- tion of Christian manhood all nations. It is the most magnificent experiment in the world's history. Can the races be Americanized? The common school house where rich and poor, white and black, Yan- kee, Irishman, Dutchman, Frenchman, German, Swede, Italian and Chinaman, Jew and Greek, Pro- testant and Catholic all meet in the artless democracy of children must answer the question and we have no fear. All hail, the American common school house ! Allhail the American common school teachers! They are the vanguard of the world. T^HIS address is published in an eight page Extra of School Education which we can mail at these very low prices: One to ten copies, ... each, 2c. Twenty copies, 35c. Thirty copies, - - - • - - 50c. Forty copies, 65c. Fifty copies, 75c. One hundred copies, ... $1.00 Money must accompany order. Postage stamps will be accepted. ADDRESS THE PUBLISHERS, SCHOOL EDUGftTION CO., 807 N. Y. Life. IVlimrieapolis, IVIinn. LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiii 019 747 863 9