Unseen Harvests - A Treasury Of Teaching - Paperback

Unseen Harvests A TRFASTRY OF TKACHINC ftftfrrf 1 tj C I. A TDK M. FUESS and EMORY S. BASFORD THE MAC MILL AN COMPANY NEW YORK 1947 But now Oswald was realizing for the first time the eternal tragedy of the teacher, that sower of unseen harvests, that reaper of thistles and the wind, that serf of custom, that subjugated rebel, that feeble, persistent antagonist of the triumphant things that rule him. And behind that immediate tragedy Oswald was now apprehending for the first time something more uni versally tragic, an incessantly recurring story of high hopes and a grey ending the story of boys and girls, clean and sweet-minded, growing up into life, and of the victory of world inertia, of custom drift and the tarnishing years. H. G. WELLS I admit that your vocation is labourious, but I utterly deny that it is tragic or deplorable, as you call it. To be a schoolmaster is next to being a king. Do you count it a mean employment to imbue the minds of your fellow citizens in their earnest years with the best literature and with the love of Christ, and to return them to their country honest and virtuous men In the opinion of fools it is a humble task, but in fact it is the noblest of occu pations. Even among the Heathen it was always a noble thing to deserve well of the State, and no one serves it better than the moulders of raw boys. ERASMUS Foreword s is a collection of miscellaneous writing clustered around the focal - L magnet of education. Although some of the material is obviously erudite, those who are hunting for a solemn history of educational theory or practice will certainly be disappointed in this book. Fortunately for them, there is an abundance of such treatises already on themarket or at least gathering dust on library shelves. We have tried to select discreetly from authors, great and not-so-great, passages which have some bearing on educational policy or procedure, or which, because of their content or purpose, might be conceived of as especially entertaining to teachers. Inevitably the contents have a wide range. It is a far cry from Confucius to Mr. Dooley, and there is a vast difference in tone between John Milton and Max Beerbohm. The selections have been chosen deliberately to reflect different periods and attitudes. We have included some nuggets from educational philosophers like A. N. Whitehead and William James, and from two Presidents of the United States, Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson a few stimulating comments on their profession by such ripe and talented practitioners as Billy Phelps, Bliss Perry, and Horace D. Taft and even more obscure paragraphs and stanzas which describe eminent instructors and their pupils. Here will be found chapters from lane Eyre and Nicholas NickJehy, from Thomas Wolfe and Booth Tarkington, from llazlitt and Stephen Leacock. Nor should the inclusion of a few school stories be regarded as evidence of frivolous intent on the part of the editors, for from these may be derived some of the most searching com ment on pedagogues and their victims. Think, for example, of the portrayal of the small English boarding school in Walpoles The Gods and Mr. Perrin or of the hidebound faculty conservatism in Bradbys The Lanchestei Tradition We hope, then, that this volume may be picked up at random by pro fessors and schoolmarms seeking for recreation, and that they may find in it faithfully limned some of the hazards, theannoyances, and the durable satisfactions of their profession. It is true that we meet in these pages Wackford Squeers, Ichabod Crane, and other none-too-creditable schoolmasters of tradition but no one can dip into this anthology without making again the discovery that teachers as a group possess to a high degree the virtues of idealism, self-sacrifice, and human sympathy. Fur thermore it can do teachers no harm to peruse some of that criticism, implied or direct, which they need as a corrective to the perils inherent in their autocratic positions...