4U POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



profession of teaching, if it were not that new ideas in education 

 urgently demand a hearing. These new ideas are concerned with the 

 development and perfection of natural tendencies in the individual — 

 which, if properly directed, would bring him into more sympathetic 

 and efficient relation with society. It is the purpose of this article to 

 show that the average teacher of to-day is not an efficient agent in social 

 advancement. There still persist in him low or vague ideals of con- 

 duct. His mind is hidebound, and he is indifferent to problems of a 

 social or political nature. He is aggravatingly humble, and forms a 

 willing block in the existing bureaucratic system of school government. 



Persons of even moderately delicate sensibilities are certain to be 

 surprised if they come in contact with many teachers or principals in 

 any of our large cities. One must be limited in his acquaintance if 

 be does not know men in high position in school administration in 

 cities, whose brutality is evident in their treatment of persons beneath 

 them in authority, whose manners and speech are so coarse that their 

 companionship in polite circles would be avoided whenever possible, 

 whose selfishness and narrowness are so intense as to account fully 

 under the present system of school government for their advancement 

 beyond their less assertive fellows. Coincident with the lack of refine- 

 ment characteristic of some teachers in the public schools, there is so 

 general a deficiency of positive, militant and constructive qualities 

 that the profession in its entirety is noticeable for its lack of intellec- 

 tual alertness, of moral courage and of social and political understand- 

 ing. 



The student of social conditions has no difficulty in assigning to 

 its proper cause the fact that in every part of the country teachers are 

 often treated with disrespect (tempered with occasional fear) by their 

 pupils, and with patronizing indulgence by people generally. In spite 

 of pronouncements by leading public men, and by newspapers on the 

 great and useful work of the public school teacher, the basic conviction 

 persists that the profession of teaching is customarily followed by men 

 who do not possess the force and manly power and the love of wide 

 activity that characterize men who engage, for example, in law or 

 finance. When the profession is entered by forceful young men, the 

 relation is frequently a temporary one to be given up later for " some- 

 thing better." 



The average high-school faculty is a heterogeneous composite of 

 training and ability — a few forceful and several weak characters fre- 

 quently with only normal-school training, a few college-trained men of 

 ability not invited into college work, and more college men who never 

 would be invited. When all are together the quality of the mass is 

 distinctly commonplace, and does not contain the power of self-stimula- 

 tion. There is among them an undercurrent of feeling that they are 



