TEACHER AND EDUCATION

Evening Star, Issue 20058, 26 December 1928, Page 11

TEACHER AND EDUCATION

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —There never was a time in the history of humanity when we required in the interest of a growing and changing humanity teachers with a wide outlook and nothing petty and parochial in their mentality—able to grip and understand present-day tendencies, with a certain knowledge of the history of all countries, with their many attributes, and ‘keeping before the young .idea the truth of things as far as humanly possible, thus creating in the child a clear knowledge of truth and right in other nationalities as well as our own. The real or born teacher unfolds the mind of the child as the sun does the llowor, a gradual opening or dawning process, the young mind innocent, curious, and with the wonder spirit over dominant —eager to know. What, a chance for a teacher who understands child moulding in these palpitating times and a gradually changing world? Scholarship and knowledge recognises no geographical boundaries, wide as the sky. What arc the qualifications of a scholar and teacher today? Toleration', sympathy, no bigotry in bis or her nature, and a wide horizon. Once those moulding the young idea arc disposed towards being bigots they cease to bo scholars, and a blow blurs their vision. It means a dwarfed outlook and a closed window towards humanity’s highest and best ideals. William James, no mean authority on matters educational, once wrote: ’“I believe in that education that makes yon recognise a _ good man wliea you seo him.” This_ opinion opens us a wide and far-reaching vista, and means fundamentally the elimination of .snobbishness, to realise man as man, and placing in the graveyard of oblivion much of the traditional stuff and other fetishes that are overloading present-day educational methods. — I am, etc., ” Ei.t.iott Standi'ieij). December ?.'!•