The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1916-10-01

Our schools must come to it sooner or
later. We will dethrone from our
| stained-glass windows this Master Christ
Teacher, we will close our Sunday
schools, stop our pipe organs. quit pub
| fishing Bibles and overturn our family
| altars-in word, if Christ is not the ex-
ample for all teachers, if for no other
reason than that of consistency, we will
| overturn the urns of holy water, quench
| the fire beneath our incense burners and
| boldly declare that it is better to know
| the length of the Nile than that 1.-THE
pure in heart shall see God"
But where is the Froebel or Pestalozzi
or Writ Montessori or Sackville-
Stoner who has ever measured with
Christ? In educating people, what phonic
method, or word or sentence method, or
,, Austrian method has ever been able to
reach as far in making manhood and
womanhood as did Christ?
Our agricultural schools, especially as
they have developed in recent years in
cur beloved state of Alabama-how excel
lent they are and how proud of them we
are! But we must admit they have not
had quite the effect on pupils that the
teaching of Christ had on those He
taught.
All the Master Teachers pupils were
poor, ignorant, common people made up
OF fishermen and publcans coming under
His instruction after reaching manhood
after all possibility of directing the
Elasticity of youthful mental growth had
passed, and remaining with Him only
three years. How dismal, in the light
of this, seem our failures after taking
the child at six, or in the kindergarten
before, and laboring through the primary,
grammar and high school grades, on up
through fouryear course in college
with perhaps a professional course added
altogether some 10 or Is years.
Jesus taught his pupils no literature,
He commented on no classical forms of
expression, no figures of speech and the
only recorded instance. wherein He ever
wrote was when he wrote in the sand.
But what wonderful results! A literature
from these ignorant peasants more won
derful, more admired and more quoted
than that written by any other pen.
Never once did He speak to them of
palette and canvas-never once, as far
as we know, did He even speak of paint
ing and yet the life picture of His atti-
tude before His pupils was the inspira-
ton by which the greatest painters of the
world have caused men to stand in awe
before the most wonderful canvases eyes
have ever seen.
At no time did He ever play a musical
misunderstanding He never taught
music-we never hear tell of Him ever
singing song, but without His beautiful
words there would hardly have been
Handel or a Mendelsshon-cert not
a Handel or a Mendellohn as we know
them.
Let's see. How did He do it? Certainly
not by writing books on pedagogy, nor by
"a change of textbooks" nor by treatises
on discipline He never heard of the
phonic method of reading nor of the Aus
TRAN method of subtraction.
He did it by infusng into His pupils
character that gloried in the beauty OF
the good.
Now, it is trite to say that kingdoms
and customs change, but human charac-
ter, the worth of life, the souls destiny
do not change. The great cause of our
educational effervescence is not simple
fled spelling or mathematics in our high
school physics, or this method or that.
1t is the failure of teachers to love and
live for what the Master-Teacher loved
and lived for; the glory of the beauty
of the good.
And an education without this beauty,
whether of you or your child, is something
like unto mathematics with the multiple
cation table left out, or literature with
out an alphabet 1 will put 1T to you:
which is the worthier to know the helSht
of the Andes or that Jesus saves?
But how tragically foolish to choose
one of these when both may as easily
and gloriousy be known!
And so it comes about that our schools
need teachers who not only know but
who can feel, and no teacher can feel
unless he or she has been associated in
timately with the Christ-hfe.