TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS—WHY TEACHERS FAIL
OF the large number of those who engage in the work of teaching, but few, comparatively, are successful. A very large majority teach but a short time and with no true success. It may not be unprofitable to consider some of the reasons for these numerous cases of failure in teaching. That such cases are numerous, no one will question, — but why they are so numerous, but few stop to consider. It will he one object in this article to name a few of the more prominent reasons as they occur to us.
1. Want of sufficient education. It is often the case that persons enter the teacher’s desk with a very limited educational capital. By the favor of some relative or the committee, and by the direct or in direct connivance of the examiners, they are entrusted with work for which they have no proper qualification. From want of the requisite knowledge, they fail to interest their pupils or to awaken any true love for school and its exercises.
2. An excess of education. This may seem rather paradoxical. It is, however, unquestionably true that some know too much,—in their own estimation,—to teach a common school. They have pursued a collegiate course of study, and have acquired a somewhat superficial knowledge of many branches. Their elementary training was entirely neglected or but very imperfectly attended to. Most of their time and attention have been devoted to the study of the “languages” and the “higher branches,” and they consider it “beneath their dignity” to teach the common branches. Indeed, they do not thoroughly understand them. Latin, and Greek, and French they know, but reading and spelling them poorly comprehend. Algebra, Geometry, Philosophy, Chemistry, and Geology they are somewhat familiar with, but of Grammar, Geography and Arithmetic they know but little, and careless. They are of the class thus described by the inimitable Dickens:—“He and some one hundred and forty other teachers had been lately turned, at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principle, like so many piano forte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the science of compound proportion, algebra, land surveying, and leveling, vocal music and drawing from models, were all as at the end of his ten chilled fingers. He had taken the bloom of the higher branches of mathematics and physical science, French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about all the water-sheds of all the world, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two and thirty points of the compass. Ah, rather over-done. If he had only learned a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more
3. Want of a lively interest in the work. No one can expect true success to attend any work in which he engages with feelings of in difference. Especially is this true of teaching. Unless one feels that his work is an important one—a work for which he has a love—he will hardly engage in its performance with a zeal and earnestness which Swill make success sure.
4. An excess of confidence. A degree of confidence in one’s ability to do a work is essential to his success in its accomplishment. Indeed he must feel that he can do before he will do. But some teachers have a superabundance of confidence in themselves. They know too much to know more. They cannot be told anything. Hints or suggestions from fellow teachers, committees or parents, they spurn as useless—or, perhaps, regard as insults.
5. A lack of confidence. If an excess of confidence is undesirable, a deficiency is equally so. A degree of it is indispensable to true success. To feel that we can do a certain work will do much to make its accomplishment certain.
6. A want of true courtesy. If a teacher would be in the truest sense successful and useful, he must have the respect and good wishes of those with whom he is called to labor. A lack of genuine politeness has done much to prevent the usefulness of many a teacher. A rough exterior, negligence of personal appearance and dress, unpolished and abrupt modes of address or excessively formal and frigid manners, have, in many cases, blighted the prospects of teachers whose intellectual qualifications were ample.
7. Want of patience. It is frequently the case that teachers despond and labor in vain because they are too impatient. When they do not see immediate and abundant fruits of their labors, they are too apt to feel that they have not done what they ought. An impatient or desponding spirit will always prove hurtful in the school room, and they who indulge the same will not prove successful. It is the teacher’s duty to labor wisely and patiently; to sow the good seed with diligent and careful hand: another and a greater will give the increase in his own good time—particularly is this so in moral culture and results.
8. Want of adaptation. Some teachers have the ability to succeed in some particular situation and under a certain order of arrangements and circumstances, while the most trifling change or deviation will cause a failure. Lacking the ability to adapt themselves to existing circumstances and, surroundings, they lack one of the most important ssentia1s to success.
9. Want of professional feeling and interest. “Every man,” said Webster, “owes a debt to his profession.” By this we understand that every member of a profession is under obligations to do what he can for the elevation of his profession. This he must do by promoting his own improvement, by uniting with others in associational effort, and in various ways by manifesting a professional interest and feeling—a true esprit de corps. A teacher who secludes himself, with drawing from all associated efforts and meetings for mutual improvement, may keep a good school—but as a man and as a professional teacher he will fall far behind the mark. If his own views, plans, and results are entirely satisfactory to himself, he will, if he has true professional feeling, gladly communicate them to others and not be content to hide his light as under a bushel. We would then advise all teachers who would make success sure, to unite heartily in every effort and plan designed for the good of their profession. By the very means adopted for professional improvement, personal profit and advancement will be secured.—Conn. Com. School Journal.