(Being a school teacher is hard enough in normal times but we cannot imagine how so many people in that profession feel as they ponder so much uncertainty as the days rush toward the beginning of school. Although his words were written more than a century ago and use some terminology that time has modified, we hope Dr. Frank Crane’s encouraging words are of some strength for—)
THE TEACHER
Teaching is the most honorable occupation in which any one can engage. It is the most self-respecting business on earth.
In it one knows he is earning his salt, if he is faithfully fulfilling his duties. He is justifying his existence among men, he is doing his bit for the state, and he is serving the Lord.
No profession offers such constant inducements to be honest, truthful, humane, and intelligent. The teacher has the most admirable of all opportunities for the development of high character.
There are probably fewer immoral, shady, devious, or hypocritical person in the teaching business than in any other, not excepting preachers and reformers.
The school teachers I have met in my time grade higher, I deliberately assert, than any other class of workers…
Good teachers are born. When a [child] finds one, the kind God makes, the kind that inoculates the pupil with the love of learning, [that child] has found a pearl of great price…
The teacher’s influence I reckon to be the most far reaching of all. No reform is of much value that is not begun with children.
It is more honorable to teach school than to make money, or to hold high office, or to lead an army.
“The durable satisfactions of life,” says a recent article, “come faster, in greater variety, and stay longer for the live and growing teacher than for any other human being except the teaching person called by some other name.”
The teacher has the greatest opening for intellectual advancement, for we learn more by teaching than we do by studying…
Teaching is hard work. But it is the kind of work that strengthens and constantly refreshes life, and not exhausts life, when pursued in the right spirit.
Everyone should do a little teaching if only to find himself, for it is the best of all kinds of work for self-revelation, self-development, and self-discipline. Teaching is an excellent preparation for any other career. The President of the United States* was a teacher, and he seems to be holding his own with the kings and czars that have been in the ruling business all their lives.
Take off your hat to the teacher. He is a personage.
*This was written when Woodrow Wilson, who taught in several schools before becoming President of Princeton University before entering politics.