DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL IDEAS 31 



is a blessing, but to be condemned to work ignorantly and stupidly is 

 misery and degradation. A man walks securely and does well only 

 where the light of the mind shines along his path; and if he walks by 

 faith, he still walks in the light of the mind. 



Imagination, which so largely controls human life, is a will o' the 

 wisp unless it be illuminated and directed by the educated intellect. 

 All genuine popular movements are inspired by sympathy, by a 

 desire to go to the help of those who suffer, who are wronged, whose 

 burdens are too heavy, to whom opportunity is denied. It is this 

 that has provoked and sustained the revolutions which have liber- 

 ated, which have given new hope and courage to the oppressed. It 

 is this that impressed on the nineteenth century its most distinctive 

 feature. 



It was an era of emancipation, of enlargement of the life of the 

 whole people. Faith in the worth of liberty, of equality of rights, 

 of universal enlightenment, became a passion. New insight was 

 gained into the truth that ignorance is slavery, and that where the 

 masses are permitted to remain ignorant, tyranny and oppression 

 are inevitable. Hence the faith in liberty and in equal rights grew 

 to be an enthusiasm for the spread of knowledge. As the beneficence 

 of science, its power to prevent or cure disease, to develop the trea- 

 sures of nature, to minister to human needs in a thousand ways, be- 

 came more and more manifest, public opinion turned with increasing 

 force to the advocacy, establishment, and maintenance of systems 

 of free schools in which the minds of all might be prepared to adjust 

 themselves to an environment created by widening thought and 

 more accurate knowledge. The recognition of the indispensable need 

 and paramount worth of universal education led to a higher appre- 

 ciation of the dignity of the teacher's office. He is no longer a 

 pedagogue, but a cooperator with God for the regeneration of the 

 world. Teaching evolves into a learned profession, is seen to be the 

 supreme function of all learned professions through which, if it were 

 rightly performed, there would be little litigation or disease or sin or 

 ignorance. When men came to understand that the teacher is the 

 school, their love for the school issued in respect and reverence 

 for the teacher; and he who through the ages had been a slave, or 

 treated as one, is now honored of all the wise and good. The best 

 things -- religion and culture, morality and art -- are propagated, 

 and they can be propagated only by those in whom they are a 

 vital power. Hence the teacher should have a liberal education, 

 should make his own the highest faith, the truest knowledge, the 

 purest and most generous love that have thrilled a human brain and 

 heart, and then acquaint himself with the theoretical and practical 

 details of his work. The first requisite is to be a genuine, fair, 

 brave, intelligent man or woman. It is his business to further 



