Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 24, 1994 TAG: 9409270013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GUSTAVO A. MELLANDER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Some pretty famous people credit their successes to a specific teacher, as well.
A few examples.
Winston Churchill was a very poor student, but he is remembered as a master of the English language. He gained that mastery because, having failed Latin in high school, he had to repeat the year. Among the subjects he had to repeat was English. He began to appreciate, as he said, ``its majesty.'' It happened because an interested teacher recognized his latent talent and ability ``to grow'' in English. He encouraged him, and introduced him to the nuances of his native tongue. The efforts and guidance of this interested teacher fanned the child's spark into a flame that fired Churchill's life-long love of and success with language.
Good and great teachers are remembered by the results they achieve and the impact they had on those whom many others regarded as ``losers.'' Churchill was considered a loser, as was a young Welsh boy who became a famous actor.
By all accounts, Richard Burton succeeded because of a single teacher. A single man patiently coached, pushed, cajoled and drove a young, raw boy to a successful acting career. Much of this was done after school and on weekends as the teacher painfully broke the boy's poor speech patterns and heavy working-class accent. In its place, he molded the boy's voice into the powerful tool of the Shakespearean actor. As a tribute to that teacher, the boy refused to use his given name when he began his acting career, and instead took his teacher's name, Richard Burton, as his own.
Then, of course, there is Ann Sullivan Macy, who was hired to work with a terribly spoiled and undisciplined child. It fell upon her to teach a girl who was deaf, mute and blind - Helen Keller. The latter's international fame remains to this day a tribute to her patient and persevering teacher.
I mention the teachers of well-known figures only to highlight the impact teachers can have. But great victories are won by good teachers every year, though they may be unheralded and don't appear on the front pages. There are no limits to what can be accomplished by a dedicated, patient and sympathetic teacher.
Not all your students will become famous, no matter how skilled you are at your profession; but if you inspire one student to work to his highest potential, to set his sights on a career, to establish new, positive standards of behavior ... if you create excitement where there was boredom and disinterest, you have indeed won a lasting victory.
``The best teacher is one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listeners with the wish to teach himself,'' wrote the noted British historian William Bulwer in the 19th century.
Plato said it well: ``Do not train boys to learn by force and harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.'' Clearly, in our more enlightened age, the quotation should be expanded to include ``girls.''
Despite our critics, and there is reason to fault shortcomings, schools have progressed for the better. Read the literature of the last century, Charles Dickens in particular, and you get a good idea just how grim and counterproductive the classroom used to be.
The colonial schoolmaster worked on the assumption that it didn't matter what you taught your students as long as they didn't like it. Pain and punishment were integral parts of ``education.'' Schools were to be dismal, authoritarian prisons and many a child carried those scars all the days of his life. We can rejoice that no school purposely charts such a course in our time.
In his book ``The Schools,'' Martin Mayer remarked that one of the significant contributions to American education of the progressive-education movement was that it made it respectable for teachers to be nice to children in school.
For the most part, our schools are happy places, and this in itself is a testimonial to the kinds of warm, understanding people we have brought into the profession.
From the students' viewpoint, the good teacher is one who has an abiding and continuing interest in their personal development.
Teachers try to uncover talent and potential in every child, no matter how hidden they may be. And the vast majority of us have benefitted from that concern and caring attention.
When was the last time you thanked a former teacher?
Gustavo A. Mellander is dean of graduate education at George Mason University.
by CNB