Montclair State College - La Campana Yearbook (Upper Montclair, NJ)

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mm jmm The TeacKer for tne New Age A new, strange, restless, puzzling, tantalizing age is here. Traditional beliefs and prac- tices in politics, religion, society, ethics and education are crumbling. The old earth has passed away, a new earth is in birth. Education makes life and in turn is remade by life. Neither is static, both change with each generation. Never did greater changes impend in our individual, social and national life than now. Education and teachers must change to meet the new order. Into this hurly-burly of perplexities, of shifting ideas and ideals, of tremendous possi- bilites , thousands of new teachers wll come each year to meet responsibilities and opportu- nities such as their predecessors have never known. What shall be the personality of the new teacher who must face the new day? He was a meek little man, with sagging frame, dim lamps and feeble ignition so runs the description of a college professor in a recent short story — a perfect type of what the teacher should not be. He (and in this paper, of course, he includes she ) must have a body that will stand a greater strain than was ever put upon a public school teacher before. He needs a heart that pumps the rich red blood to the ends of his fingers and toes, a stomach that digests a beefsteak without complaint, lungs that drink in deep draughts of God ' s fresh air, and nerves not like sweet bells, jangled, out of tune and harsh, but steady, responsive, controlled, like a well-tuned harp whose music sweetens and inspires all who hear. Given a good body and good health, he will be, as he should be, an optimist . Most of the great pessimists like Schopenhauer and Carlyle have been neurotics or dyspeptics. No teacher is fit to help in making a new and better America who is not full of hope and faith and cheer. He must believe with all his mind in boys and girls as the best possession of a nation, in the worth of education, in the perfectibility of young bodies and minds and souls, and above all, in his own vocation for this work. The pessimist may run a railroad or a bank, but he can ' t run a school. The teacher for the new day must be full of enthusiasm for his greatest task will be to inspire a cosmopolitan body of children from scores of races having various backgrounds, prejudices, handicaps and obsessions. Money can build a church, but money cannot fill a church with the spirit of the living God. Money erects school houses, but money can ' t make a school. In the old Genesis story man, fashioned by the fingers of Omnipotence, lay on the bosom of mother earth, a thing, a clod, a lump of clay, as helpless as the Galatea that Pyg- malion struck out from the marble. Then Divinity breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the thing became a man. He leaped, he ran, he rejoiced, he loved, he hated, he sinned, he fought, he worked, he acted his part in the strangest drama that ever was or ever will be, the drama of human existence, and all because he had been inspired from without. Inspira- tion comes today as inspiration came then, not from dead things, however splendid, but from the warm touch of a living soul. To inspire, to kindle ambition, to energize, to attract all sorts and conditions of childhood to the ideals of humble, virtuous, patriotic America is the task of the new teacher. 8

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IN MEMORIAM

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To interpret this new age the teacher must be a part of the new age, must study it, must Hve in it, must know it and, in a measure, understand it. The slender store of kno vledge car- ried away with the diploma of college or normal school will not suffice a teacher even for his first term. If he is to teach out of a full treasury he must never cease to be a student. He must enrich himself each year from books and from life. No teacher can meet the new day who is not a progressive. A conservative has been defined as one who thinks nothing can ever be done for the first time. All progress begins in a dream and an experiment. The teacher w ho is too tired or too timid to try anything new is dead before he begins. He w ill become a hopeless reactionary, an obstructionist, and will join the ranks of the critical, the formal, and the grouch. But he who grows by study, observation and experiment w ill find keen intellectual relish in his profession, an increasing sympathy for childhood and youth and will find the fountain of perpetual youth for himself in helpful, hopeful, happy service. He may become tired in his work, but he will not become tired of his work. Such a teacher will be and remain always an enthusiast, the rarest and the most precious of his kind. His pupils will rise up to call him blessed, and America, whether she knows it or not, will owe him more than her armies and navies. Of course, such a teacher must have a sense of humor, must know how to laugh and how to enjoy the laughter of others, must be able to recognize a joke when he gets into the same county with one. He will bear the burden of the day better, he will see the foibles of youth in a clearer perspective and he will be happier and healthier himself because he can see and enjoy the funny things with which life abounds. Our new teacher must be a genuine patriot. He is a true patriot who knows how to respect himself, his neighbors and his God; who does each day an honest day ' s work and lays him down each night to an honest night ' s rest; who adds his little mite to the nation ' s store of power or goods; who holds a steadfast hope in the things that are worthwhile; who proves his Americanism not by his much shouting or by his genuflections to the flag, but by the clean, square democracy of his daily life. In a word, he is the man or woman who knows his present humble duty and, seeing, does it. America needs men who in the hour of need will die for her. Even more she needs the unknown and unnoted millions who know enough and care enough and dare enough to live for her. Is this order too large? Is the ideal too high? Are such teachers too rare? In the class of 1922 there are some who measure up to this stature. There are others who may do so. Everyone who aspires and struggles for this ideal will be a better teacher for the struggle and the aspiration and along this road, the road of endeavor and of idealism, lies happiness. CHARLES S. CHAPIN NORMAL HILL AT NIGHT Alone against the night hills, Beloved our Alma Mater veiled in night Stands silently And dark; o ' er the myriad-eyed vale A sentinel of wisdom. Stars come Casting a glory round her, 1 ill from out the dark she rises Fair as the temple of Athene. Moonbeam silver touches campus. Trees and bushes, into life; Comes the Goddess, then, of Wisdom From the portals; And loyal spirits Whose love will not die, walk with her.