Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/741



When I was a boy I was set by my father to the task of dipping all the water out of a spring-hole in the hay-field. I performed the task faithfully, thinking that the object was to empty the hole. But the next day I was obliged to tell my father that the task had gone for nothing, as the hole was as full as ever. I had merely removed certain accumulated impurities, which was the real object of the work.

So we often toil with definite objects in view when all the while Providence is at work through us at a very different and always a more important task. We may be disappointed that we have not emptied the hole, or we may more wisely rejoice that we have freshened the spring.

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Taste and Propriety Violated—See.

Teacher, A Young—See.

TEACHER, THE COMPETENT

I am reminded of a remark made to me recently by a gentleman in middle life, a very excellent carpenter, whom I saw watching my boys, twenty-four of them, at work making their first weld in the forging shop. He seemed intensely interested as he watched one of the young men at his work. I said: "You seem to like to see the boys work. Do you understand what they are doing?" "Yes," said he, "I worked a year once in a blacksmith shop." "Well," said I, "then I suppose this operation of welding is a very simple matter to you." "Not at all," said he; "I never made a weld in my life. I never got a chance. I kindled the fire and blew the bellows, and I did some striking for other men; but they never let me try to make a weld." Then he added, with a good deal of feeling, "These boys learn more in one week about the really essential art of forging than I learned in half a year." And the secret of it is they have a thoroughly skilled workman who is competent both to teach and to demonstrate every principle involved.—, "Journal of the National Education Association," 1905.

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TEACHER, THE IDEAL

Dr. Ernest Fox Nichols, the new president of Dartmouth College, gives this bit of classic advice to teachers:

In twenty years of teaching and observation, I have become convinced of some things connected with teaching as a profession. No teacher can hope to inspire and lead young men to a level of aspiration above that on which he himself lives and does his work. Young men may reach higher levels, but not by his aid. The man in whose mind truth has become formal and passive ought not to teach. What youth needs to see is knowledge in action, moving forward toward some worthy end. In nobody's mind should it be possible to confuse intellectual with ineffectual. Let it not be said:

We teach and teach Until like drumming pedagogs we lose The thought that what we teach has higher ends Than being taught and learned.

It ought to be impossible, even in satire, to say, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."

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TEACHER, THE IDEAL, AT WORK

In the photographic studio it is not enough to have a favorable light, expensive lenses, and the latest arrangement of shutters and slides. It is not enough to have fair women and brave men before the camera. It is not enough to have a perfect plate, ready to respond to the faintest ray of light; there must also be a skilled operator, who shall moderate the glare, arrange the shadows, measure the distance, adjust the instrument, calculate the exposure, pose the sitters, engage the attention, and at the psychologico-photographic moment spring the shutter.

In like fashion the artist-teacher deals with his carefully sensitized pupil as he prepares to take a picture worth developing. Deftly he arranges each detail and improves every condition; then he unveils before him some image of truth and beauty wrought by skilful hands and eagerly awaits the results. If he succeeds, he knows it without troublesome delay. He glances swiftly about his class, detecting here and there a pupil who responds, "his rapt soul sitting in his eyes"; and the instructor glows with the consciousness that his labors have not been in vain.—, "Proceedings of the Religious Education Association," 1905.

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TEACHERS, ALERTNESS OF

It is an interesting commentary on the earnestness and professional zeal of the teachers as a class, that they are in such