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ment; in its immediate results upon the pupil, or its more remote effects, ever going forth from him as a central source; in each and all these views, we find abundant evidence of its peculiar excellence and responsibility as a calling. The teacher is thus seen to be a fashioner of human souls, moulding them measurably, into his own likeness.

This character of his work indicates, at once, what that of the instructor should be. He owes it most sacredly to his noble employment, that he be no intellectual sluggard. Unrefined manners, an uncultivated mind, or an easy conscience, have no business here. They are not the fitting appointments for this most elevated work. The teacher has chosen an office most responsible and most honorable. Let him do it honor, then, by his own manly character and his faithful labors. But this he will fail to do, unless he is ever diligent in work of selfimprovement.

We have said that self-culture has reference to external habits, the mind, and the heart. Some more specific consideration of each of these will be pertinent to the subject.

If the foregoing views are correct, the external manners of the teacher are not of minor consequence. Pupils continually copy the teacher, and usually go farther than he, if he is addicted to coarseness of any kind. If they are well bred at home, they will probably disrespect him; if not, they will most likely become confirmed in their own rudeness by his example. Some regard for dress, even, is most important. We are, we confess, no great admirers of those who are careless in this respect; and still less do we respect those who affect oddity or. indifference here. We do not think we could even sympathize with a modern Diogenes. While we should despise a fop, we should feel an almost equal degree of disgust with one who purposely or otherwise should play the philosopher in rags. And worse than any where else is this in the teacher. He needs to be scrupulous in regard to his person, his dress, and his manners, as well as in his pronunciation and his use of language. Fifty, a hundred, and perhaps more pupils are accustomed to see him some hours every day. They become familiar with all his habits, even the most minute. If he is careless in his dress, eccentric in his manners, coarse, low or worse in his words, some of his pupils, it is to be hoped, would appreciate such qualifications; but a greater number probably would become his copyists. We shall not be understood as advocating finical exactness; an undue preciseness which is among the worst species of affectation, and not, if our recollection serves us, entirely unknown to the profession. But we would express most decidedly the belief, that no one destitute of refinement and courtesy, whatever else he may have, is fit

to be a teacher. The school-room should be a place, the very atmosphere of which is pervaded with the spirit of true polite

ness.

Progressive intellectual culture is, if possible, yet more essential to the true teacher. He must always be a learner. To be willing to stand still here is to be willing to go backward. And yet the temptation to stand still is as great as the yielding to it is fatal. This may be seen at a glance. The teacher spends hours every day in immediate mental contact with those who are perhaps greatly his inferiors in age and knowledge. He is by his position constantly a superior. This continued relation, and the consequent feeling which must accompany it, tend to work out at length an overbearing spirit, conceited and pedantic. Hence has sprung that peculiar genius, born of Ignorance and Conceit, known in all times as the genuine pedagogue, and deservedly the butt of ridicule and satire from the time of Solomon downward. We account for the odium that falls upon his luckless head, on the principle that the caricature of anything is disagreeable, just in proportion as the thing caricatured is really excellent and noble. The pedant is the true teacher in caricature; hence he becomes the object of unmitigated disgust.

There is, we say, in teaching, such a tendency. This tendency brings with it no necessity, however. It can be easily resisted. To do this successfully the teacher must grow intellectually; and this growth implies an ever-widening sphere of knowledge. A higher standard of education, indeed, is now demanded by public opinion, in common school teachers, than formerly. The time has happily. gone by when the candidate would answer, provided, by dint of digging, he could keep in advance of his classes. A considerable degree of culture is now required-we hope the demand will be greatly increasedin every one who takes charge of a school of any kind. And we doubt not that a teacher may, for a time, be tolerably useful, even if his education is chiefly limited to the studies he has occasion to teach. But if he stop long here; if he make the bare demands of the school-room the limit of his attainments, his mind will contract, his self-conceit dilate, and pedantry will grow thriftily on its proper soil. Now, in order to forestall such a result, the teacher needs some constant intellectual employment, calculated to enlarge and discipline his mental powers. In deciding what this employment shall be, every one, of course, would consult his own preferences. There are, however, many branches of knowledge essential to the highest usefulness of the teacher, and also in themselves most valuable acquisitions, which are not usually required as qualifications in a large class of instructors. A knowledge of Intellectual Phi

losophy, for example, is not required by Committees and school laws, in order to teach primary and grammar schools. And yet, if the brief views of teaching we have given are near the truth, how unfit is any one to teach even such school, who is ignorant of the powers of the mind and the laws of its action. As unfit, in truth, as he to build a temple, who is ignorant of the first rudiments of architecture.

Highly useful, also, to the teacher, is some knowledge of the classical languages and literature. Our own vernacular, as all know, is largely indebted to those wonderful languages; and whoever would understand the full power of those words we have thus borrowed, must learn them in their birth-place and among their kindred. And as to studying those old philosophers, poets, moralists and historians through translations, it is, for the most part, like looking at the finest landscape in the dim twilight, so that he was not very far from the truth who said there really never were but two translations- those of Enoch and Elijah. Every student, moreover, knows how thoroughly and extensively classical allusions are woven into the very texture of the finest English literature. We may now regret this, perhaps, but it will make the fact no otherwise than it is. The great poem of the language is literally full of allusions to the old histories and mythologies. Hence the value of some attainments in this direction to every teacher. And then there is a knowledge of history, far more extended than the school books give, always useful to the instructor. For he is especially concerned to know the great science of man; and this must be studied mainly in language and history. These studies, most appropriately termed the Humanities in the older schools, while they are useful to all, are, on many accounts, especially advantageous in the business of teaching. In fine, that bond of brotherhood, so aptly termed by Cicero, quoddam cummune vinculum, which runs through and binds together all the various branches of science, makes them mutually illustrate each other; so that he who undertakes to teach any one of them will find his capability to do so increased, almost in exact proportion to the extent of his knowledge among the rest. Pushing his researches thus into one and another of the departments of knowledge, the teacher will accomplish two most important results. He will discharge a debt which he owes his noble calling, and cultivate himself as a man. He will thus escape that narrowness of thought and view which so often characterizes the pedantic schoolmaster, and which satirists have so often used to the discredit of his profession, and will elevate himself and honor his calling.

We are not unaware that we may be met here with the difficulty that the time allotted to many teachers, for their own cultivation,

in reading and study, is small. It may be said that the greater portion of each day must be given to the school, and that the remainder is needed for physical exercise and social intercourse. We admit the difficulty to some extent; still, judging from what has been done, we are convinced that a proper and systematic arrangement, in regard to time, will give considerable opportunity for so desirable an object. Instances are not wanting of teachers of the very highest usefulness, making large literary attainments. Difficult languages have been learned and abstruse sciences acquired. We have in our mind at this moment a distinguished professor who, years ago, while engaged six hours each day in teaching boys, began the study of Hebrew, and read the Old Testament through several times in that language. Honored female teachers, too, some of whose names are familiar to us as household words, might be named, who have cultivated most assiduously their own minds while actively engaged in the duties of their chosen employment. Almost all of us know the great acquisitions of Dr. Arnold, who, while engaged many hours every day in teaching, found leisure time in which, both as student and author, he gained high and worthy distinction in the republic of letters. Such examples show us what may be done by a careful economy of time and rigid adherence to system. They show us, too, that the business of instruction does not necessarily cramp the mental energies, nor prevent their growth; and that while one is a teacher, he may also become a man of taste and letters. In fact, we think it both the duty and the privilege of every teacher to be such; and unless we greatly mistake, it will be found true on careful examination, that those teachers who are doing the most for their own mental improvement, are, as a general rule, the most useful to their pupils.

That moral culture, also, is essential to every teacher, hardly needs an argument. The matter is so self-evident as to require little or no illustration. In our own State, where from the very beginning the cultivation of the heart in all schools has been supposed, as a matter of course, to take precedence of every other; and where the school laws not only recognize religion as the highest and noblest possession possible to the mind, but also enjoin it upon the teacher to inculcate piety and Christian morals, love to God, and love to man, here, we say, it is too obvious almost for remark that the teacher should possess high moral and religious principle. "The business of a schoolmaster," said Dr. Arnold, "no less than that of a parish minister, is the cure of souls." This may be stating the matter strongly. But true it is, that he must have clean hands and a pure heart, who aspires to this sacred calling. And this moral element should never be suffered to lose anything of its vitality or force. It should receive the most assiduous cultivation. There should

be in the educator a life and a growth of all good affections. To all who fall short of this, and bring strange fire to this consecrated altar, the words of the Sybil to the companions of Æneas are a fitting admonition, Procul, o, procul este, profani.

We have briefly seen what teaching is, and what it requires. It is surely matter of pleasant reflection that teachers in our idst are coming every year better to understand the true character of the r calling, and the relations they sustain to it. This state of things gives promise of a time not distant, when their ranks shall be filled with highly cultivated men and women, and the name of teacher shall be suggestive only of taste, refinement and all good culture. Every teacher is interested in such a result. Let each do his part, and the work will speedily be accomplished.

THE RELATIONS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL.

BY

AN important means of promoting the usefulness of common schools is diffusion of a correct knowledge and sense of the relations of teacher and pupil. From the want of just and steady principles respecting these relations, the benefit of schools is often much abridged. Difficulties not unfrequently arise in school districts, and in schools themselves, from a want of definite views on the part of parents and teachers respecting the legal rights, powers, and duties of the latter. Knowledge of the extent and limitation of his authority is hid from his eyes. Access to it is exceedingly difficult. It is not open to him in the statute book, to which his approach would be comparatively easy. It lies in fragments scattered up and down in a wilderness of judicial decisions spread through different States, for though the decisions of courts in other States are not of themselves valid here, there is a wise respect paid to them in our own courts, and a cautious hesitation to come into conflict with them. They have the authority of revered wisdom if not of positive law. The Committee, too, are sometimes embarrassed in the discharge of their duty. They find it extremely difficult to ascertain the limits of either the teacher's authority or their own. They cannot always tell whether they are over or within the line of their duty when the intervention of their authority is called for by the earnest complaint of parents and by the insubordination of individual or confederate scholars. The inconvenience of this vagueness is more extensively felt than complained of. Perhaps the autho

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