The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on Education

								

require? The question asked thus broadly admits no precise answer; for
in reality there is no human excellence which is not useful for us
teachers. No good quality can be thought of which we can afford to
drop. Some day we shall discover a disturbing vacuum in the spot which
it left. But I propose a more limited problem: what are those
characteristics of the teacher without which he must fail, and what
those which, once his, will almost certainly insure him success? Are
there any such essentials, and how many? On this matter I have pondered
long; for, teaching thirty-nine years in Harvard College, I have each
year found out a little more fully my own incompetence. I have thus
been forced to ask myself the double question, through what lacks do
I fail, and in what direction lie the roots of my small successes? Of
late years I think I have hit on these roots of success and have
come to believe that there are four of them,--four characteristics which
every teacher must possess. Of course he may possess as many more as
he likes,--indeed, the more the better. But these four appear
fundamental. I will briefly name them.
First, a teacher must have an aptitude for vicariousness; and second, an
already accumulated wealth; and third, an ability to invigorate life
through knowledge; and fourth, a readiness to be forgotten. Having
these, any teacher is secure. Lacking them, lacking even one, he is
liable to serious failure. But as here stated they have a curiously
cabalistic sound and show little relation to the needs of any
profession. They have been stated with too much condensation, and have
become unintelligible through being too exact. Let me repair the error
by successively expanding them.
The teacher's art takes its rise in what I call an aptitude for
vicariousness. As year by year my college boys prepare to go forth into
life, some laggard is sure to come to me and say, "I want a little
advice. Most of my classmates have their minds made up about what they
are going to do. I am still uncertain. I rather incline to be a teacher,
because I am fond of books and suspect that in any other profession I
can give them but little time. Business men do not read. Lawyers only
consult books. And I am by no means sure that ministers have read all
the books they quote. On the whole it seems safest to choose a
profession in which books will be my daily companions. So I turn toward
teaching. But before settling the matter I thought I would ask how you
regard the profession." "A noble profession," I answer, "but quite unfit
for you. I would advise you to become a lawyer, a car conductor, or
something equally harmless. Do not turn to anything so perilous as
teaching. You would ruin both it and yourself; for you are looking in
exactly the wrong direction."
Such an inquirer is under a common misconception. The teacher's task is
not primarily the acquisition of knowledge, but the impartation of