Teachers—Shall Not They Too Be Taught?
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TEACHERS—SHALL NOT THEY TOO BE TAUGHT?
Public Schools, and all other schools, are simply what the teachers of them are. Whatever characteristics and deficiencies are found in the teachers, the same return in the schools. For instance, we know a teacher who is dyspeptic, snappish, with no grace of manners, and no flowing sympathies; all these can be noticed, more or less, to re-appear in the school of which he is principal. He is learned in the bookish facts—but in what makes a noble person he is almost altogether deficient.
Hardly a teacher now in any of the schools, large or small, but needs discipline himself or herself. This is the great truth underlying the Normal Schools. Every teacher, male and female, should be required regularly to attend those schools all through their lives, no matter how old they get to be. Does not the musician need unintermitting practice? Does not the dancer, the painter, the orator? Just the same does every person engaged in teaching.
A grand Normal School in a city would be a fountain of life for the entire education of that city. It should be, in some respects, the noblest institution in the city. It should keep up with the age, not fall behind it in any respect. It should grade itself in science &c., by the leading savants , the great reviews, the modern discoveries and announcements. It should be the rendezvous of all mental authority.
The physique also—the developement of the body, muscle, strength, grace, agility, pure blood, sound organs—all these should be recognized and favored. The teachers themselves should be athletes.
We sometimes think when we look around, that there are no good teachers at all in any of the schools. A person crammed with arithmetic, geography, and “grammar”—we see him or her, to be sure; but what a little way they go towards educing what can be easily educed out of a young human being!