A Square DealandThe School Teacher
The development of the high school, especially during the last half century, has been literally phenomenal. Nothing like our present system of education was known in earlier times. No such system of popular education for the people by the representatives of the people existed.
¶It is, of course, a mere truism to say that the stability and future welfare of our institutions of government depend upon the grade of citizenship turned out from our public schools. And no body of public servants, no body of individuals associated in private life, are better worth the admiration and respect of all who value citizenship at its true worth, than the body composed of the teachers in the public schools throughout the length and breadth of this Union. They have to deal with citizenship in the raw and turn it out something like a finished product. I think that all of us who also endeavor to deal withthat citizenship in the raw in our own homes appreciate the burden of the responsibility.
¶The training given in the public schools must, of course, be not merely a training in intellect, but a training in what counts for infinitely more than intellect—a training in character. And the chief factors in that training must be the personal equation of the teachers; the influence exerted, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, by the man or woman who stands in so peculiar a relation to the boys and girls under his or her care—a relation closer, more intimate, and more vital in its after-effects than any other relation save that of parent and child. Wherever a burden of that kind is laid, those who carry it necessarily carry a great responsibility. There can be no greater. Scant should be our patience with any man or woman doing a bit of work vitally worth doing, who does not approach it in the spirit of sincere love for the work, and of desire to do it well for the sake of the work’s sake.
¶Doubtless most of you remember the old distinction drawn between the two kinds of work, the work done for the sake of the fee and the work done for the sake of the work itself.The man or woman in public or private life who ever works only for the sake of the reward that comes outside of the work, will in the long run do poor work. The man or woman who does work worth doing is the man or woman who lives, who breathes that work; with whom it is ever present in his or her soul; whose ambition it is to do it well and to feel rewarded by the thought of having done it well. That man, that woman, puts the whole country under an obligation. As a body all those connected with the education of our people are entitled to the heartiest praise from all lovers of their country, because as a body they are devoting heart and soul to the welfare of those under them.
¶It is a poor type of school nowadays that has not a good playground attached. It is not so long since, in my own city at least, this was held as revolutionary doctrine, especially in the crowded quarters where playgrounds were most needed. People said they didn’t need playgrounds. It was a newfangled idea. They expected to make good citizens of the boys and girls who, when they were not in school, were put upon the streets in the crowded quarters of New York to play at the kind of games alone that they could play at in the streets. We have passed thatstage. I think we realize what a good healthy playground means to children. I think we understand not only the effects for good upon their bodies, but for good upon their minds. We need healthy bodies. We need to have schools physically developed.
¶Sometimes you can develop character by the direct inculcation of moral precept; a good deal more often you cannot. You develop it less by precept than by your practice. Let it come as an incident of the association with you; as an incident to the general tone of the whole body, the tone which in the aggregate we all create. Is not that the experience of all of you, in dealing with these children in the schools, in dealing with them in the family, in dealing with them in bodies anywhere? They are quick to take the tone of those to whom they look up, and if they do not look up to you, then you can preach virtue all you wish, but the effect will be small.
¶I should hold myself a poor citizen if I did not welcome the chance to wish you Godspeed in your work for yourselves and to wish you Godspeed in your work as representatives of that great public body of public school teachers, upon the success of whose efforts to train aright the children of to-day depends the safety of our institutions of to-morrow.[21]
¶It is not too much to say that the most characteristic work of the Republic is that done by the educators, by the teachers, for whatever our shortcomings as a Nation may be—and we have certain shortcomings—we have at least firmly grasped the fact that we cannot do our part in the difficult and all-important work of self-government, that we cannot rule and govern ourselves unless we approach the task with developed minds, and with what counts for more even—with trained characters. You teachers make the whole world your debtors.
¶Of your profession this can be said with more truth than of any other profession barring only that of the minister of the Gospel himself. If you—you teachers—did not do your work well this Republic would not endure beyond the span of the generation.
¶Moreover as an incident to your avowed work, you render some well-nigh unbelievable services to the country. For instance, you render to the Republic the prime, the vital service of amalgamating into one homogeneous body the children alike of those who are born here and of those who come here from so many different lands abroad. You furnish a common training and common ideals for the children of the mixed peoples who are here being fused into one nationality.
¶It is in no small degree due to you and to your efforts that we of this great American Republic form one people instead of a group of jarring peoples. The pupils, no matter where they or their parents were born, who are being educated in our public schools will be sure to become imbued with that mutual sympathy, that mutual respect and understanding, which is absolutely indispensable for the working out of the problems we as a people have before us.
¶And one service you render which I regard as wholly indispensable. In our country, where altogether too much prominence is given to the mere possession of wealth, we are under heavy obligations to such a body as this[A]which substitutes for the ideal of accumulating money the infinitely loftier, non-materialistic ideal of devotion to work worth doing simply for that work’s sake.
¶I do not in the least underestimate the need of having material prosperity as the basis of our civilization, but I most earnestly insist that if our civilization does not build a lofty super structure on this basis, we can never rank among the really great peoples.[28]