Francis B. Pearson

“ The teacher’s attitude.—Such a teacher with such a conception of life and of her work finds teaching school the very reverse of drudgery. Each day is an exhilarating experience of life. Her pupils are a part of life to her. She enjoys life and, hence, enjoys them. They are her confederates in the fine game of life. The bigness and exuberance of her abundant life enfolds them all, and from the very atmosphere of her presence they absorb life. Their studies, under the influence of her magic, are as much a part of life to them as the air they breathe or the food they eat. ”

“ But mental thralldom is quite as inimical to complete living as thralldom of the body. The mind must know in order to move among the things of life in freedom. Ignorance is slavery. The mind that is unable to read the inscription on a monument stands baffled and helpless, and no form of slavery can be more abject. The man who cannot read the bill of fare of life is in no position to revel in the good things that life offers. The man who cannot read the signboards of life gropes and flounders about in the byways and so misses the charms. If he knows the way, he has freedom ”

“ The poet ponders life long and deeply and then gives forth an interpretation in artistic form that is surcharged with the very quintessence of life. The poet absorbs life from a thousand sources—the sky, the forest, the mountain, the sunrise, the ocean, the storm, the child in the mother’s arms, and the man at his work, and then transmits it that the recipient may have a new influx of life. The poet’s quest is life, his theme is life, and his gift to man is life. His mission is to gain a larger access of life and to give life in greater abundance. ”

“ She would esteem it a privilege to attend a concert by high-class artists, or to visit an art gallery, or to witness a presentation of a great drama, or to see the Jungfrau; and she feels the same exaltation as she anticipates her work as a teacher. She sings on her way to school because of the privileges that await her. She experiences a fine flow of sentiment without becoming sentimental. Teaching, to her, is a serious business, but not, in the least, somber. Painting is a serious business, but the artist’s zeal and joy in his work give wings to the hours. ”

“ Life in literature.—Back of these sights and sounds we discover men—Cicero, Demosthenes, Homer, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Milton, Dante. We trace the thoughts and emotions of these men and find literature. And in literature, again, we come upon another manifestation of life. Literature is what it is because these men were what they were. They saw and felt life to be large and so wrote it down large; and because they wrote it thus, what they wrote endures. They stood upon the heights and saw the struggles of man with himself, with other men, and with nature. ”

“ And men see and come to pluck the flowers to transplant again in their own souls that they, too, may have a garden like unto his. His élan carries over into the lives of these men and they glow with the ardor of his emotions and are inspired to deeds of courage, of service, and of solace. For every flower plucked from his garden another grows in its stead more beautiful and more fragrant than its fellow, and he is reinspired as he inspires others. And thus in this transfusion of life there is an undertow that carries back into his own life and makes his spirit more fertile. ”

“ If his spirit cannot rise to the plane of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, he will roam into fields that are less fruitful. The spirit that is rightly attuned lifts him away from the sordid into the realms of the chaste and the glorified; away from the coarse and ugly into the realm of things that are fine and beautiful; and away from the things that are mean and petty into the zone of the big, the true, the noble, and the good. And so with body, mind, and spirit thus doing their perfect work, he can, at least, look over into the promised land of complete living. ”

“ The teacher’s influx of life.—And the teacher imbibes the spirit of the poet and becomes vital and thus becomes attuned to all life. Flowers spring up in her pathway because they are claiming kinship with the flowers that are blooming in her soul. The insect chirps forth its music, and her own spirit joins in the chorus of the forest. The brooklet laughs as it ripples its way toward the sea, and her spirit laughs in unison because the poet has poured his laughter into her soul. ”

“ In fact, the teacher is certain to encounter obstacles, and many of these have their source in American homes. Indeed, some of the most fertile sources of discord in the school may be traced to a misconception of democracy on the part of the home. One of these misconceptions is a species of anarchy, which appropriates to itself the gentler name of democracy. But, none the less, it is anarchy. It disdains all law and authority, treads under foot the precepts of the home and the school, flouts the counsels of parents and teachers, and is self-willed, obstinate, and defiant. ”

“ Unless she can see in the multiplication table the power that throws the bridge across the river, that builds pyramids, that constructs railways, that sends ships across the ocean, that tunnels mountains and navigates the air, this table becomes a stupid thing, a dead thing, and an incubus upon the spirits of her pupils. To such a teacher mathematics is a lifeless thing, without hope or potency, the school is a mere convenience for the earning of a livelihood, the work is the drudgery of bondage, and the children are little less than an impertinence. The vitalized teacher is different. ”

“ He wants to think big thoughts, and he would have stars to guide him. He knows that a man is as high, as broad, and as deep as his thoughts, and that if he would grow big in his thinking he must have big objects to engage his thoughts. He would explore the infinite spaces, commune with the planets in their courses, attain the sublime heights where the masters have wrought, and discover, if possible, the sources of power, genius, and inspiration. He would find delight in the colors of the rainbow, the glory of the morning, and the iridescence of the dewdrop. ”

“ This is education. This is the inviting vista that stretches out before the eyes of the child under the spell and leadership of such a teacher. In their quest for the meaning of the sea, these companions, the child and the teacher, will come upon the fields of grain, the orchards, the flocks and herds, the ships, the trains, and the whole intricate world of commerce. They will find commerce to be a manifestation of the sea and moreover a big factor in life. It will mean far more than mere cars to be counted or cargoes to be estimated in the form of problems for the class in arithmetic. ”

“ Such a man is obviously outside the pale, without hope of redemption. If such a story, told by such a raconteur, could not touch him, he is hopeless. In his spiritual landscape there are no undulations, but it reveals itself as a monotonous dead-level without stream or verdure. He eats, and sleeps, and walks about, but he walks in a spiritual daze. To him life must seem a somber, drab affair. If he were a teacher in a traditional school, he would chill and depress, but he might be tolerated because a sense of humor is not one of the qualifications of the teacher. ”

“ But so long as we can look upon insanitary conditions without a shudder; so long as we permit dirt to breed disease and crime; so long as we make our streams the dumping places for débris; so long as we tolerate ugliness where beauty should obtain; and so long as our homes and our farms betray the spirit of shiftlessness,—so long shall we have occasion to blush when we look at our flag and confess our dereliction of our high privilege of patriotism. ”

“ Music and life.—Having a sensory foundation capable of reacting to the best music, this man opens wide the portals of his world for the reception of the orchestra, the concert, the opera, and the choir, and his spirit revels in the “concord of sweet sounds.” Through the toil of the day he anticipates the music of the evening, and the next day he goes to his work buoyant and rejuvenated by reason of the musical refreshment. He has music in anticipation and music in retrospect, and thus his world is regaled with harmony. ”

“ Human interest.—And wherever she is, there is humanity. There are no dry bones in her work, for she invests every subject with human interest 156and causes it to pulsate in the consciousness of her pupils. If there are dry bones when she arrives, she has but to touch them with the magic of her humanity, and they become things of life. Whether long division or calculus, it is to her a part of the living, palpitating truth of the world, and she causes it to live before the minds of the pupils. ”

“ She differentiates major from minor and never permits a minor to usurp the throne. Being an integral part of her life, her work takes on all the hues of her life. For her, culture is not something added; rather it is a something that permeates her whole nature and her whole life. She does not read poetry and other forms of literature, study the great masterpieces of music and art, and seek communion with the great, either in person or through their works—she does not do these things that she may acquire culture, but does them because she has culture. ”

“ Self-respect.—And, just as he wins the respect of others, so he wins the respect of himself, and so the triumvirate of virtues is complete. Having achieved self-respect he disdains the cheap, the bizarre, the gaudy, and the superficial. He knows that there are real values in life that are worthy of his powers and best efforts, and these real values are the goal of his endeavors. Moreover, he has achieved freedom, and so is not fettered by precedent, convention, or fads. He is free to establish precedents, to violate the conventions when a great principle is at stake, and to ignore fads. ”

“ The vase of flowers, daintily arranged, on the breakfast table becomes the standard of good taste thenceforth, and all through life a vase of flowers arranged less than artistically gives one a sensation of discomfort. A traveler relates that in a hotel in Brussels he saw window curtains of a delicate pattern; and, since that time, he has sought in many cities for curtains that will fill the measure of the ideal he absorbed in that hotel. Beauty is not in the thing itself, but in the eye of the beholder, and the eye is but the interpreter of the ideal. ”

“ Her growth.—And so, through her thinking she grows big—big in her aspirations, big in her sympathies with all nature and mankind, big in her altruism, and big in her conceptions of the universe and all that it embraces. And when people come to know her they almost lose sight of the teacher in their contemplation of the woman. Her pupils, by their close contact and communion, became inoculated with the germs of her bigness and so follow the lead of her thinking, her aspirations, her sympathies, and her conceptions of life. ”

“ The trained mind alone has the key that will unlock libraries, art galleries, the treasure houses of science, language, history, and art. The untrained minds must stand outside and win what comfort they can from their wealth, their social status, or whatever else they would fain substitute for the training that would admit them. All these things are parts of life, and those who cannot gain admission to these conservatories of knowledge cannot know life in its completeness. ”

“ The elements are so numerous as to baffle and bewilder the mind. It looks out at one from so many corners that it seems Argus-eyed. At one moment we see it on the Stock Exchange where men struggle and strive in a mad frenzy of competition; at another, in a quiet home, where a mother soothes her baby to sleep, where there is no competition but, rather, a sublime monopoly. Again, it manifests itself in the clanking of machinery where men are tunneling the mountain or constructing a canal to unite oceans; or, again, in the laboratory where the microscope is revealing the form of the snow crystal. ”

“ But for the imagination of people in the past we should not have the rich treasures of mythology that so delight us all. Every child with imagination is constructing a mythology of his own, and from the gossamer threads of fancy is weaving a pattern of life that no parent or teacher should ever wish to forbid or destroy. Day by day, he sees visions and dreams 27dreams, and so builds for himself a world in which he finds delight and profit. In this world he is king, and only profane hands would dare attempt to dethrone him. ”

“ If the teacher reprimands the boy, the boy as certainly discredits the teacher and all that she represents. If she cannot enjoy such a wholesome story, he feels that her arithmetic, geography, and grammar are responsible, and these studies decline somewhat in his esteem. Moreover, he feels that the teacher’s reprimand was unwarranted and unjust and he fain would consort with people of his own kind. Many a boy deserts school because the teacher is devoid of the saving grace of humor. Her inability to see or have any fun in life makes him uncomfortable and he seeks a more agreeable environment. ”

“ They will come to realize that work is the one great luxury in life, and that education is designed to increase the capacity for work in order that people may indulge in this luxury more abundantly. The more work one can do, the more life one has; and the better the work one can do, the higher the quality of that life. They learn that the adage “Work to live and live to work” is no fiction but a reality.
Work and enjoyment.—The school, therefore, becomes to them a workshop of life, and unless it is that, it is not a worthy school. ”

“ Agriculture the source of life.—Agriculture is not the sordid thing that our dull eyes and hearts would make it appear. In it we shall find the romance of a Victor Hugo, the poetry of a Shelley or a Shakespeare, the music of a Mozart, the eloquence of a Demosthenes, and the painting of a Raphael, when we are able to interpret its real relation to life. When the morning stars sang together they were celebrating the birth of agriculture, but man became bewildered in the mazes of commercialism and forgot the music of the stars. ”

“ Desire for pastoral beauty.—Beyond the city, in the alluring country places, we see a landscape that delights the senses, ornate with hedges, flowers, vine-clad cottages, highways of surpassing smoothness, 59fertile fields, and thrifty flocks and herds. There are carts and wagons on the roads bearing the products of field and garden to the marts of trade. Men, women, and children zealously ply the hoe, the plow, or the shovel, abetting Nature in her efforts to feed the hungry. ”

“ Like fireflies that bespangle the darkness of the night, humor scintillates through all life’s phases and activities and causes the day to go more pleasantly and effectively on. It twinkles through the thoughts 233and gives to language a sparkle and a nicety that cause it to appeal to the artistic sense. It gives to discourse a piquancy that stimulates but does not irritate. It is the flavor that gives to speech its undulatory quality, and redeems it from desert sameness. It pervades the motives and gives direction as well as a pleasing fertility to all behavior. ”