My Life As A Teacher

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NOTE When I wrote The Memory of Certain Persons I could not find room in one volume for all the valued friendships of a lifetime, nor for the comment I wished to make on my three careers, in education, in music, and in writing. This volume is intended to supplement the outline of my work as a teacher which I gave in The Memory. When reference to that work is necessary I shall use the shortened tide. I did my teaching at Amherst, at Columbia, at Beaune, and on numerous lecture trips. For convenience I shall here treat these phases of my experience as though they were separate and distinct, though there were two instalments of the Amherst and Columbia chapters, and the public lecturing accompanied and overlapped all the other activities, both at home and abroad The chronology is given correctly in The Memory. The reader will not be confused by a slight regrouping of incidents. The material in Chapter XIII, on the PhD. degree, appeared in the New Yor Times for June 3, 1945. Chapter XI, on National Training, was first published in the Review of Reviews for October, 1919. I thank both publications for permission to reprint. CONTENTS I. DEFINITIONS II. I AM INVITED TO TEACH III. I BEGIN TO TEACH AND LEARN IV. TEACHER IN A COUNTRY COLLEGE V. PRESIDENT MEIKLEJOHN VI. TEACHING AT AMHERST AGAIN VII TEACHING IN A CITY UNIVERSITY VIII. TEACHERS AND EDUCATORS RUFFLED BY WAR IX. TWO EXTRAORDINARY STUDENTS X. BEAU GESTE XI. NATIONAL TRAINING XII. GREAT BOOKS XIII. WHAT IS A DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY? XIV. PHI BETA KAPPA XV. LAST TALKS WITH WOODBERRY XVI. LECTURE TOUR XVII. FRONTIERS AND HORIZONS XVIII. EDUCATION FOR MY CHILDREN CHAPTER I: Definitions Nothing in education needs explaining more than this, that a teacher may be neither a professor nor an educator, that a professor may mature to the age of retirement without teaching or educating, and that an educator, without loss of reputation, may profess nothing, and never face a class. A teacher is one who shows his fellow man how to do something, who imparts an active skill, and who kindles the desire to acquire this skill and to use it. In all creatures there is a natural ambition to live, which necessarily includes an ambition to learn, but even a natural ambition will need encouragement. The cow teaches the newborn calf to walk, the mother bird teaches her young to fly, though neither cow nor bird, so far as we know, has a teacher's diploma, or the equivalent, from a normal school. If the calf is re luctant to stand up, the cow gets behind and under, and gives a dramatic boost. If the fledgling recoils from the unsolid air, the mother bird pushes it overboard. This is teaching, of no mean sort. A professor is a person who knows all about a subject, or professes to know all about it, or at least a good deal about it, or about a part of it. If the part he knows is a very small part, the professor is called a specialist. When a sufficient number of specialists are assembled on a college faculty, the subject of which each knows only a small part is said to be covered, and the academic department to which they all belong is regarded as fully manned. In ancient Ireland, if legend may be trusted, there was a tower so high that it took two persons to seeto the top of it. One would begin at the bottom and look up as far as sight could reach, the other would begin where the first left off, and see the rest of the way. I would not imply that no professor is a good teacher, but I do say plainly that professors are not necessarily teachers they are not trained to be, colleges and universities do not engage them as such. A professor wears his Ph.D. to show not that he can teach, but that, as a reservoir of knowledge he is reasonably full...