Schoolmaster

“ Practically, and to all intents and purposes, the schoolmaster, in the eye of the membership of our Church, and of the other Scottish Churches, was simply a layman, the proper business of whose profession was the communication of secular learning. And as in choosing their tailors and shoemakers the people selected for themselves the craftsmen who made the best and handsomest shoes and clothes, so, in selecting a schoolmaster for their children, they were sure always to select the teacher who was found to turn out the best scholars. ”

“ The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood, being considered a kind of idle, gentleman-like personage of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. ”

“ The schoolmaster is generally a man who, having learnt to teach, has long ago ceased to learn. It is the past education of the schoolmaster that generally stands in his way. He believes in education, and thinks it a good thing in itself; he believes in rules and orders and lessons as desirable, whereas they are only the necessary outcome of Adam’s misconduct in the Garden of Eden. ”

“ The schoolmaster is the person who builds up the intelligence of the pupil; the intelligence of the pupil increases in direct proportion to the efforts of the teacher; in other words, he knows just what the master has made him know and understands neither more nor less than the master has made him understand. When an inspector visits a school [Pg 33] and questions the pupils he turns to the master, and if he is satisfied says: "Well done, teacher!" ”

“ Now it happened that his seat was close to the dean’s, and as they were returning from morning service, walking down the cloisters, the dean called to one of the boys to send King to him.
[29] He went at once.
“How dare you eat strong onions just before a service?” demanded the dean, who had been head-master of one of the big public schools. [30] “Once a schoolmaster always a schoolmaster,” which means that when a man has been a schoolmaster, he always treats every one afterwards, whether men or boys, just as if they were schoolboys under him. ”

“ First, they suggest something as regards our Schools, for parents and for those who have to do with the children. You send them to gain knowledge, and to be under discipline. But it rests with yourselves in great measure what they think of the knowledge, and how they take the discipline. The Schoolmaster is for them a power, a force, a stranger who can punish. It rests with him of course to gain by degrees over them, through earning their respect, an authority of a gentler and different kind ”

“ Nowhere to-day can you find in village schoolmaster, district or town school teacher, superintendent of instruction, or learned professor, a figure that fills out and continues just the portrait of the typical pedagogue of a generation or more ago. ”

“ Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this amiable official. He has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune seems to have set her mark; nothing he ever did, or was concerned in, appears to have prospered. ”

“ The schoolmaster and his work may be equally, or more, valuable to the community at large -- presumably more rather than less -- but in so far as his chief interest is of the pedagogical sort his place is not in the university. ”

“ On the whole, if a schoolmaster be adequate to flog his scholars, it should suffice; and I cannot but blame our Commission of Inspectors, when they go examining schools, that they do not make the schoolmaster go through the duty of firking one or two young persons of his class in their presence, by way of trial, to see what is in him. ”

“ I should feel that I might continue my teaching instead of devoting all my time to my cherry-orchard. Or, if I could see that my pupils were acquiring the habit of correct English as the result of my work, I'd give myself a higher grade as a schoolmaster. My neighbor over here teaches agriculture, and one of his boys produced one hundred and fifty bushels of corn on an acre of ground. That's what I call excellent behavior, and that schoolmaster certainly knows how to organize the activities of his class. ”

“ The most direct mode of assisting to dispel the ignorance and the concomitant prejudices which unhappily prevail to so great an extent in this country, is to become Teachers. The profession of a schoolmaster is that which has been adopted by the most successful* [2] of this year's Bachelors, and I trust others of your number, as well as of those who may follow in your steps year after year, will embrace the same profession, and distinguish themselves as much in the imparting of knowledge as in its acquisition. ”

“ It is fortunate for the future fame of the venerable Schoolmaster that his accomplishment has been appreciated by one so entirely capable of doing him justice and whose industry has left no source of information uninvestigated. ”

“ Schoolemaster.]
I heare the hornes: give me some meditation,
And marke your Cue.—Pallas inspire me.
[Enter Thes. Pir. Hip. Emil. Arcite, and traine.]
THESEUS.
This way the Stag tooke.
SCHOOLMASTER.
Stay, and edifie.
THESEUS.
What have we here?
PERITHOUS.
Some Countrey sport, upon my life, Sir.
THESEUS.
Well, Sir, goe forward, we will edifie.
Ladies, sit downe, wee'l stay it.
SCHOOLMASTER.
Thou, doughtie Duke, all haile: all haile, sweet Ladies.
THESEUS.
This is a cold beginning.
SCHOOLMASTER.
If you but favour, our Country pastime made is. ”

“ And in the effort to control the spirit of a pupil, to make one’s own approval his test and mould him by the stress of our own presence, in the ambition to do this, the craving for moral power and visible guiding, the subtle pride of effective agency, lie some of the chief temptations of a schoolmaster’s work. ”

“ We have a very good sample at our school, for we have a schoolmaster who is, as a rule, 'better in health than temper,' especially when we have Geography. To hear most schoolmasters talk you would think that they never did wrong in their lives ”

“ But the Schoolmaster is secondary, an effect rather than a cause in this matter: what the Schoolmaster with his universities shall manage or attempt to teach will be ruled by what the Society with its practical industries is continually demanding that men should learn. ”

“ This custom of appointing a supervisor, as distinct from the schoolmaster, prevailed at the schools, other than schools for choristers, which were founded from time to time. Thus at Winchester, Eton, Acaster, and Rotherham—to name a few instances only—the responsible head of the institution was the provost, while the master of grammar was merely required to give instruction in the subjects assigned to him. The evolution of the schoolmaster as the superintending organiser and controller of an establishment belongs to a later date in English educational history. ”

“ The good schoolmaster recognizes and respects the rights of the scholar. While he is an unflinching disciplinarian, expecting an unquestioning obedience, he does not believe in his own infallibility. He is kind and considerate, and regards his pupil as an embryo man, "endowed with certain inalienable rights," which none may trample upon with impunity. ”

“ In the old Ages, when Universities and Schools were first instituted, this function of the schoolmaster, to teach mere speaking, was the natural one. In those healthy times, guided by silent instincts and the monition of Nature, men had from of old been used to teach themselves what it was essential to learn, by the one sure method of learning anything, practical apprenticeship to it. This was the rule for all classes; as it now is the rule, unluckily, for only one class. ”

“ The boy was pale and thin-faced, with large, hollow eyes and a tall, wide forehead—a scholar’s forehead, as the schoolmaster, accustomed for years to the observation of boys, had already noted. But what latent scholarship was displayed in the reading of that obnoxious magazine? And what business, the schoolmaster asked himself angrily, had a boy of that age to be boxed up indoors on a fine afternoon in the Easter holidays?
The schoolmaster was a conscientious man in the pursuit of his calling. From the very first he had taught himself to look upon boys as individuals. He loved them ”

“ In brief, it would take too much time to describe all the duties which fall upon a schoolmaster to perform faithfully toward the young, but still longer would it take to describe all the difficulties which encompass him at home if he is willing to economize as his duties require. ”

“ Greater attention in our present training colleges for schoolmasters to due instruction in English, especially in correct and fluent speaking. 3. More encouragement to men of talent and education to become and to remain schoolmasters, by holding out the prospect of honourable offices to distinguished teachers. Why should Inspectorships of Schools be always given to clergymen and barristers, to the exclusion of the schoolmaster? 4. The appointment of a thoroughly accomplished scholar as English Master in every great public school, of equal rank with the other masters. ”

“ The schools are making strenuous efforts to give each individual pupil a chance to adjust himself to a vocation. The junior high school organization, classification of pupils according to ability, tests and measurements, and vocational guidance are all means to this end. The schoolmaster of tomorrow must realize that there is much good in the education of the past, but that the changing conditions in our social and industrial life must be met with similar readjustments in the program of education. ”

“ The work of the district school, of the academy, and of the college is well portrayed by McMaster. "The daily labors of the schoolmaster who taught in the district school-house three generations since were confined to teaching his scholars to read with a moderate degree of fluency, to write legibly, to spell with some regard for the rules of orthography, and to know as much of arithmetic as would enable them to calculate the interest on a debt, to keep the family accounts, and to make change in a shop.... ”

“ The schoolmaster, then, is a useful member of society—not to be spared at any stage of its progress. But he is particularly necessary to communities which are in the transition state; for, upon the enlightenment of the rising generation depend the success and preservation of growing institutions. Nor does his usefulness consist altogether—or even in a great measure—in the number of facts, sciences, or theories, with which he may store the minds of his pupils. ”

“ In all day-schools the authority of the head-master is necessarily impaired by that of the father, and the discipline of the school by that of the home; but here this is more than usually the case. The parents even go so far as to trench upon the schoolmaster's domain, reserving to themselves the right of deliberately breaking the school rules, whenever it is convenient to them to do so. ”

“ During adolescence he will be subjected to a force that he must, at all costs, resist. That is the official attitude, and it is the attitude of nearly every unscientific writer on the subject. A schoolmaster considers the moral question from the point of view of the policeman. 'Here,' he says, 'is something that must be suppressed.' Various writers suggest various remedies. The popular idea is to sublimate the passions, to provide another focus. Schoolmasters usually select the focus that is most near to the boy's interests: namely, athletics. ”

“ His pleasure in such children is unbounded; the pains he takes with them unlimited; the successful careers he is able to launch them upon exceed the ambition of those most wildly ambitious of human beings (dare we say it?) —parents, quiet, sensible, matter-of-fact parents. But the schoolmaster takes little credit to himself for these happy results. Schoolmasters and schoolmistresses are modest people, though they are not always credited with their virtues. ”

“ Butler to that important and much-coveted post.
"Schoolmastering is a narrowing profession," he said; "you are always dealing with inferiors, telling people what to do—that is what makes schoolmasters so disagreeable in old age. When any of my teaching colleagues come here I always advise them to do something outside school-work—travel or write books. A good schoolmaster is a man who uses his holidays well. ”

“ To be worth his salt, a schoolmaster must, of course, have scholarship—the more the better. But that alone will never make him a quickening teacher. He must be 'apt to teach,' and must lose himself in his task if he is to transfuse his [Pg 172] blood into the veins of boys. ”

“ More is apt to be expected in such cases than it is possible to perform; besides that, after the schoolmaster is prepared for his duty, all depends upon whether the schoolboy is also prepared for his. ”

“ You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. ”

“ It becomes with every schoolmaster an object of ambition and an avenue to success to have furnished pupils who have gained a high place in these competitions, and there is hardly any other mode in which the state can do so much to raise the quality of educational institutions throughout the country. ”

“ Fourthly, being grown rich, they grow negligent, and scorn to touch the school but by the proxy of the usher. But see how well our schoolmaster behaves himself.
His genius inclines him with delight to his profession. Some men had as well be schoolboys as schoolmasters, to be tied to the school, as Cooper's Dictionary and Scapula's Lexicon are chained to the desk therein; and though great scholars, and skilful in other arts, are bunglers in this. ”

“ It is readily admitted, that persons of this profession are more highly estimated than they were forty or fifty years ago; for I distinctly recollect the time when all I have said of the degrading treatment of teachers generally, both by parents and others, was literally true; when to the question, “who is such a one?” the common reply was, “oh, nothing but a schoolmaster or schoolmistress;” ”