THE HAPPY SCHOOLMASTER.*
"J. B. DAD a heavy hand. I have known him double his knotty fist at a poor, trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a Sirrali, do you presume to set your wits at me ? ' " So wrote Elia a hundred years ago m his recollections of Christ's Hospital ; and if such a regret- table display of tantrums in a schoolmaster is not such a common sight to-day, we should not have far to go to find a " J. B." who, although not quite so prone to display his rabidus furor, was yet every bit as much a bundle of nerves. The cause is not far to seek. It is a commonplace remark that the teacher, like the poet, is born and not made ; yet no walk of life reveals so many men who have drifted thought- lessly into their profession. Totally unsuited to teach, they have yet lingered on until it is too late to embrace a new calling. There are no men more miserable ; and, unfor, tunately, they are very numerous. Not only they themselves suffer, but all those whose misfortune it is to come under their guidance. The sensitive, vigorous, opening life that it is their daily duty to tend wilts at contact with them. Their spleen does not relieve itself to-day in thwackings, nor, if it did, would many of their victims have the saving humour to quote at their decease : " Poor J. B., may all his faults be forgiven ; and may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys, all head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities."
The fault, however, does not lie wholly with the teachers themselves. No profession asks so many accomplishments of its members. That your ideal teacher must be a scholar goes without saying. But a.good scholar may be a bad teacher. Indeed, cynics are not lacking who say that the two qualities tend to be found in inverse ratio. He must have a lively desire to impart his knowledge ; and, to enable him so to do, he must be a disciplinarian. He must be able so to accommo- date himself that he can see eye to eye with the boy in all things ; yet at the same time he must avoid falling into the narrowness that comes of too much " talking down." And above everything else he must be an idealist. Is it a wonder, then, that the really successful and happy teacher is so rare ? Yet his is an enjoyment few men know whose teaching remains to him an ever-expanding horizon—new, changing, alive.
Realizing that " Secondary Education in England and Wales has to-day reached a marked stage in its development," and that it is urgent to place before all who intend to take up the profession " a view of the Secondary Schoolmaster's life and position from his own standpoint," Messrs. Dunkerley and Kingham have written a handbook in which all these questions and many more—of professional training, of the life of the Secondary School world, of prospects, and of getting a post—are dealt with in turn. Both of the authors have had wide experience, and Mr. Dunkerlcy is secretary for the Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools. We should like to see their book placed in the hands of every intending school-teacher during the last year of his training. Here are scores of questions he should set himself to answer before it is too late. We should have liked to see further space given to the problems of discipline. In the end the only discipline that counts is that which is self-imposed
—a fact not here made sufficiently clear. It is time, too, that some scheme was evolved whereby a teacher's education might not end when he enters the profession. On the whole, however, the authors' attitude is so sane that it is enough for their purpose that they point the direction. We heartily recommend their book and hail it as one of the signs that the position of the Secondary Schoolmaster in England is at last becoming stabilized. It should do much to hasten the day when schoolmasters will no longer be known as members of the great band of the disillusioned.
• The Assistant Master. By G. D. Dunkerley and W. E. Kingham. London. Methuen. L33. &II
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