Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This November-December 1956, teaching is underpaid and underpopulated, members of Baylor faculty are asked “Why Teach?”
LOIS SMITH MURRAY
Professor of English
WHY am I a teacher? My reasons are thousands, stretching from Alaska to Florida, from California to Maine, and to many foreign lands. Each student there is an individual endowment with potentialities, filled with dreams; my opportunity is to partake of the wisdom of the ages with him so that we both may grow.
The teacher’s job is twofold ; he must make the student his to teach, and he must have something to give. The great teachers I have known have loved people; they have taught students — not merely subject matter. To help the student know and accept himself, to imbue him with an insatiable intellectual curiosity, to help him grow in mental and moral stature, and to help him make his life’s goal one of being rather than having— these are the true teacher’s aims. Idealistic? Perhaps. Ideals are like stars ; we never reach them, but like the mariners, we chart our course by them. Consequently, the true success of teaching is not evident in the superficial grade but frequently in terms defying measurement ; a sense of accomplishment, indomitable courage, the spur of ambition, the identification with greatness in contact with great minds, and a gleam of understanding.
Remuneration? Not always in the coin of the realm, but often a “Thank you,” a “Do you remember . . .?” a telephone call after years of absence, letters from everywhere, wedding invitations, birth announcements, new reports of fine achievements, visits — from wonderful students. Life is rich with their memories ; and because “I am a part of all that I have met,” I can share in their joys and their sorrow and glory in their triumphs. The challenge for the teacher is mighty and second only to that of parent in building with God, for truly the teacher has Heaven in his hands.
ANDRES SENDON
Chairman, Spanish Department
WHY do I teach? Because I like it, I like to teach my courses, and I like to teach people.
Throughout these many years, teaching and I have walked hand in hand, and I still experience the excitement, the joy, the happiness of my first love.
When I began to teach, soon I realized that I had to fulfill certain requirements to become a good and efficient teacher. Among others, I still hold to these principles :
To keep up with every new progressive technique, to assimilate it, and to adapt it to my personality.
To “make students” by arousing their interest through the organization and presentation of the course material.
To maintain always a sympathetic attitude toward the students.
To inspire the students to practice the fundamental habit of hard work.
In spite of the problems, difficulties, and “gripes” in the teaching field, the satisfaction which I receive in my work outweighs all of them. I like to teach!
CHARLES D. JOHNSON
Chairman, Sociology Department
WHY teach? First, the need is urgent; the call is scarcely short of a command.
Second, there are compensations in teaching. Certainly there are not great financial compensations — enough for necessities, enough for some conveniences, but not, however, enough for obvious luxuries which members of other professions and vocations enjoy. Nevertheless, good teachers are respected; excellent teachers, whether in elementary school, secondary school, or university, are revered. Furthermore, there is unparalleled satisfaction in the feeling which the teacher experiences as he learns through the years of the successes of former students — successes in the ministry, medicine, law, journalism, business, politics, research, authorship, teaching, athletics, community leadership, or in any other of the honorable professions or vocations.
Third, the teacher inhabits two worlds: the world of ideas and ideals, and the world of practical affairs. These two worlds need not be in conflict; rather, they should work in cooperation ; and in great teachers they do. This cooperation produces broadmindedness, a characteristic of integrated personality, a quality quickly perceived by students and to which they readily and favorably react. Too, at close of day — during which he has been necessarily immersed in the world of practical affairs, however rewarding — the teacher then moves for unlimited satisfaction into his other world, that of ideas and ideals.
Fourth, because the teacher — once student, now scholar — sees in every student potentialities which properly developed may result in the laying of a sure foundation for usefulness and happiness in life, his own life is incalculably enriched. The teacher who lacks ability to recognize or lacks the desire to discover these potentialities in his students can never become a worthy member of this noble profession, teaching.
Finally, since three hundred years B. C. when Socrates taught the young men of Athens (Plato was one of them) teachers have waged never-ceasing warfare against ignorance and prejudice. The battle cry is louder today than ever before; and it is now becoming universal.
Why teach?
So that knowledge may replace ignorance, mankind’s greatest enemy ; so that understanding may replace prejudice; so that, at long last, men and nations may live in peace.
HENRY TRANTHAM
Chairman, Classics Department
“WHY teach?” is a question that torments many teachers in our time.
I began teaching without benefit of a course in “pedagogy,” as education was then called, and, frankly, because no other employment was available to me as a fledgling bachelor of arts of a small college. I liked the work and became interested in the boys and girls I was called upon to teach. The curriculum in my first school was built around the Three R’s, which I finally learned by trial and error in the routine of the classroom. I could quote Shakespeare and Milton, but I might as well confess that I was a little hazy on the subjunctive mood and on common fractions. Teaching, if not at first a “calling,” eventually became for me a habit, and, with experience, a profession.
One of the distressing problems of the present age is the teacher shortage, and it grows more serious year by year. Many earnest young men and women, unable to find the answer to the question “Why teach?” leave the schoolroom and go into business or industry. There is no easy explanation of this trend. Teachers’ salaries are indeed not high, but they are on the whole more attractive than formerly. School buildings and equipment, though too often inadequate for the overflowing school population, are modern in design and emphatically “functional.” The exodus of teachers from the schools and the diminishing number of prospective teachers in the graduating classes from the schools and the diminishing number of prospective teachers in the graduating classes of colleges and universities are probably due to psychologic factors more than to economic. The social rewards of well qualified teachers are, frankly, not very alluring. Long hours, overcrowded classrooms, the endless demands of principals and supervisors for statistical reports, the extracurricular and even extramural services required of teachers, encroachment by pressure groups upon the independence of teachers, relaxation of home discipline — these are undoubtedly responsible for many of the defections.
Teachers who can survive these frustrations and do the job successfully are beyond price. They have a real “vocation” and find their reward in the affection and loyalty of parents and pupils, and in the consciousness of an important job well done. Their answer to the question, “Why teach?” would be, “Well, why not?”
EDDIE L. DWYER
Professor, School of Religion
THE strategic position of the teacher gives an opportunity for profound influence upon the lives of pupils in every area of life. This means serious responsibility as the teacher’s influence reaches out through youths who will later occupy state, national, and possibly world positions. Because the teacher’s influence can be great, his first challenge is self-development.
There are certain requirements that are more or less standard. It is expected that a teacher have maturity of personality including an attractive appearance, good voice, poise, and self-confidence ; emotional maturity involving stability, a friendly attitude, self-mastery, and a sense of humor : intellectual maturity including a mastery of subject matter to be taught, knowledge of basic ideas about human nature, knowledge of best theories and methods, and reasonable knowledge of related fields. The teacher’s real challenge, however, is to go beyond and still include these standard requirements — to have spiritual maturity which includes a high sense of intrinsic values and a concern for character development. The teacher that goes beyond is competent without being dogmatic. He guards against the superior attitude of the so-called intellectualism which philosophizes in the abstract independently of knowledge which is born of experience. He has an honest evaluation of himself but also a nobility that reflects self-control, tact, common sense, and an unselfish purpose. A teacher may possess originality, freshness, and individuality, but the results may be mediocre unless he goes beyond to stimulate others to think, to develop appreciation and thirst for learning, and to direct in the integration of life.
CORNELIA SMITH
Chairman, Biology Department
IF education is to maintain its superior place in the life and thought of America, young people must never become satisfied with the status quo. The teacher can do much to prevent this from happening, for he can start revolutions in the thoughts and spirits of his students which can remake the world. He can train them to think objectively, to know the difference between fact and opinion, to place emphasis on evidence for conclusions, and to understand that conclusions are tentative.
A teacher has the opportunity to encourage his students to look for similarities which link him to his fellow man rather than for apparent dissimilarities, in race and nationality, color and creed, which tend to separate one from the other. A teacher must be ready to discard outmoded educational patterns and to find modern patterns which fit our present need in order to develop young men and women of broad understanding and deep sympathy. A teacher, for example, shares in the joy and satisfaction experienced by a student whether of American Indian, of Chinese, of Korean, or of other ancestry when the student learns to know himself and his world sufficiently to gain acceptance to medical college.
A teacher, moreover, can be a dynamic force which triggers the process by which a student comes to establish the habit of self-education that will continue through life and, above all else, to desire to excel in service to his fellow man and to his God.
DANIEL STERNBERG
Dean, School of Music
WHY, indeed? The old and much-quoted arguments, both pro and con, are still valid and pertinent. It is still true that the teacher’s pay is low although some progress has been made in this respect. There still are occasional infringements on academic freedom although, by and large, there is little to complain of on that score. The teacher is still accorded less social prestige and recognition than the member of the legal or medical profession although that may be due to his comparatively low economic status. On the other hand, there is the advantage of job security. There is the greater abundance of vacation time than is available in other employment. There is the opportunity for study, research, and creative work as part of the job itself.
And yet, when all is said and done, these arguments carry less weight than is commonly believed in the crucial decision for or against teaching as a career. Few teachers worthy of the name become and remain teachers as a result of such reasoning. For the real compensation of the true teacher is no more expressible in terms of income or social prestige than is the true physician’s or the true minister’s.
To be in constant touch with young minds, to arouse their curiosity, and to stimulate their growth; to shape young personalities without impairing their individualities ; to meet the challenge of unpredictable questions and to impart not only knowledge, but understanding; to instill ideals by precept and example — what more exciting, adventurous, gratifying pursuit is there open to man?
Looking back over twenty-five years of teaching, I, for one, have never been much bothered by the problem : why teach ? I have yet to find some really good and compelling reason why not to.
