The Total Effect of the Teacher

In a single short sentence Thomas Carlyle suggests a searching subject: “Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker,” he said, “if it is not the truth that he is speaking?”

To paraphrase the Carlyle’s question: Why tell me that a man is a fine teacher, if it is not the truth that he is teaching?

This calls up the question as to the trust of teaching, and also the question as to what makes a good teacher.

All of us are well aware that teaching is more than a matter of academic credentials. And most fortunate are they who in a whole long lifetime have found a few great and good and effective teachers to touch and transform their lives.

The fact is that “a teacher not only teaches his subject, but he also teaches himself”⎯by which we mean that what he is inside himself is inevitably mixed with his subject matter and carries over to his students in some measure. Yet often in academic practice and procedure a student registers for a course, not knowing which of several teachers he will be assigned to. And, to put it on a very homely level, it is almost as if he were buying ungraded goods: for all of us, from our own experience, can testify that the teacher teaches not only subjects, but also teaches what he is inside himself.

One might think, for example, that such an impersonal subject as mathematics might be taught with about the same result by anyone who has the academic credentials. But the personality, the interest (or lack of it), the sympathetic attitude (or, lack of it), and the aptness of explanation make much difference even in seemingly so set a subject as mathematics.

And some of us could testify that we have seen even dead languages made to live by the warmth and sincerity and magic touch of a dedicated teacher, whose very life affects every subject he touches, every student he teaches.

And often it is not so much subjects about which we need be concerned, but teachers, and what they do in the molding of minds: for the same subject can be taught with the difference of daylight and darkness.

And this is true of all teachers, weekdays and Sundays, professional and volunteer teachers, wherever and whenever teachers teach: for teachers have a real responsibility for all ideas and all ideals and for all their impressions upon the pupil.

What the student is made to see and feel and sense, and every innuendo, is all part of the teaching process. To be a teacher is a sacred trust, and in a very real sense, the teacher is responsible for the total effect of his teaching.