Eureka daily sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1871-1887, 1880-05-09
THE NEW PROFESSION.
Extract from Beecher's Lecture on
Teachers and Teaching In the
D.vAua~ GA~~

Extract from Beecher's Lecture ON
Teachers and Teaching In the
Public Schools.
We can't afford to have the immigrants
that come here, grow up ignorant. As
they come on our eastern shore we say,
s'God bless you," and as they come on our
western shore Kearney says, "God damn
you" Laughter. For the first time
in the history Of the world God is throw
ing all people together to see if they can
live together. They can they do; they
shall. Irish, are they? Not after they
have gone through our common schools.
The common schools are the stomachs of
the nation. care not what goes into them,
men come out. And they are bound to be
the best that can be had by any expendi-
ture of money. All the money of all the
rich men in the world cannot make a better
one. They are to be a head and shoulders
above any other. / believe the children Of
the State shall be advanced far beyond the
primary stage, and just 30 far as the public
will let them go. They should be models
of everything that belongs to intelligence.
The common school has in its hands the
destiny of the nation. We want also the
educators. We must have all that is good in
the new profession. The teachers are to
occupy a higher ground than ever before.
By and by it shall be enough to say, she
was a teacher" | do not underestimate
the other professions, but they are all infe-
rior to the true Christian teacher. He
takes the little child at the bottom of soci-
ETY. and brings him up to the top, not to
teach waring sectarianlsm, butt to teach
knowledge and virtue. The common schools
are to teach virtue, on which all men agree
~ mhafauar coat Or ~ No eaof ~ oil Mo
shall never see the common school perform
its whole duty as long as it is ministered
to by scrapelings from all other professions
who are teachers because they cannot do
anything else. We must have men that
love their profession; that learn it as an
art, an art which is sublime, divine. The
teaching men and women are to stand to
the child as parents. There are thousands
of women most noblv endowed, and be-
cause he" don't come-llaughter they
sit idle and have nothing to do. We are to
have men and women, the memory of whom
will make knowledge sweet TO them. How
shall you get this? Not by starving the
teachers. When l hear of reducing the
teachers salaries / am hot with indigna-
ton. Let them devote themselves to the
children and let the State take care of them
A man that is presumptively a gentleman
the clergyman is something, we don't ex-
actly know what, but ~presumptively a gen.
tleman. 1t is not 80 with teachers. Men
take a position as teacher on the way to
something else. The young man just from
college takes the public school for a year,
on the way to something else. Society de-
mands experience in every profession. II
is only our children that we put into raw
and Impractical hands. We seem to think
that our children will come up somehow
and they do, and come up anyhow. But
any man that shows an aptitude for the
profession should be made so comfortable
that he will never want to leave it. | can.
not but express the conviction that knowl-
| edge and virtue are the salvation and the
| life Of the nation.