himself the obligations of the teacher, especially the rural teacher.

FOR TEACHERS' DISCUSSION AND STUDY

1. Have you observed cases where one teacher failed and another succeeded in a school owing to a difference in the spirit brought to the work? Is there any cure for the indifferent teacher, and if so, what?

2. Is a teacher justified in withholding something of his best effort if he feels that the salary is insufficient to compensate for the work demanded? Explain the paradox, "He who does not earn more than he receives, receives more than he earns."

3. A pessimistic writer recently said, "Any person, no matter how much he professes to love his work, will leave this work if you offer him twenty per cent. higher salary somewhere else." Do you believe this? Is it not a person's duty to command the highest salary his powers will justify?

4. Account for the fact that educational service is paid less than service in commercial lines. For example, the president of one of our largest universities receives ten thousand dollars a year; the president of an insurance company receives twenty-five thousand dollars a year.

5. Do you believe that Miss Wright, whose story is told in the chapter, received personal rewards in satisfaction and development equivalent to the sacrifice required? Is there any danger of being miserly with one's powers as well as with one's money?

6. Have you known persons whose qualities of character seemed to be brought out through service? Is it necessary that the service be in some conspicuous position in order to produce such a result?

7. Have you known teachers who seemed to feel above the work they were doing? Were they successful teachers?

8. Which is the better position so far as investment of

one's influence is concerned, the elementary school or the high school? What is meant by the paradox that the best teacher is the one who renders himself unnecessary to his pupils?

CHAPTER VIII

SCHOLASTIC PREPARATION

We have seen how the spirit brought by the teacher to his work is the first proof of his fitness. But this spirit is a matter of growth and development. Attitude arises not by chance, but out of environment and training. The teacher can not create a certain spirit toward his work by mere compulsion of will or by determination. However good his intentions, he can not teach that which he does. not himself know. He can not enter fully and sympathetically into the life and interests of those whose experiences are wholly different from his. He must have some point of contact with the people he serves, some common basis of thought, feeling and knowledge. The rural teacher must therefore be educated, so that he can lead and inspire; he must be trained, so that he can teach; he must be at heart one of his people, so that he can enter into their lives as a friend and leader. His spirit and attitude must be shaped to this end by his preparation and training.

For it is only as the teacher has made concrete in his own life and experience the standpoints and methods he

The teacher must embody the truth he teaches

wishes to impress on others that he will find his instruction effective. The world is never either formed or reformed by abstract truth or general theory. It requires the stimulus of actual lives; for it is, after all, the lives of

leaders that we follow, and not their words. This truth has not always been recognized in teaching. Not infrequently teachers have been employed who had not mastered for themselves what they were attempting to teach. And we have therefore had the spectacle of a teacher trying to transplant arithmetic, grammar or geography directly from the pages of the text-book into the minds of the pupils. It is needless to say this process is always a failure. The subject-matter taught must have first become an integral part of the knowledge of the teacher. One can not teach what does not come from within; one can not pick matter up and hand it on to others without first partaking of it one's self. Knowledge, standpoints, ideals, and all other values must first be so thoroughly assimilated that they are a real part of us before we can impart them to others.

The blind attempting to lead the blind

The rural teacher must be well educated. For if the blind undertake to lead the blind shall not both fall into the ditch? The public demand does not, in all parts of the country, yet insist on adequate scholastic training for teachers. Even in some very rich and highly intelligent states, hardly the simplest rudiments of knowledge in the fundamental branches are required of rural teachers. Thousands of schools are yet taught by those who have had little or no schooling in advance of that given in the rural schools themselves. In a middle western state one girl who failed in the examinations for passing from the eighth grade into the high school of her home town, took the teachers' examination, obtained a certificate and became a teacher in the rural schools! In many parts of the South the conditions are as bad. Such a situation is

a shame and a disgrace. Where standards of such low

grade are tolerated by the public, the teachers themselves ought out of self-respect to arise and demand adequate scholastic preparation as a condition of entrance to their professional ranks. Teachers must be willing to do this if they expect to stand high in public regard; if they hope to increase their salaries; if they wish to be laborers worthy of their hire. All efforts, therefore, such as are sometimes made by teachers to lower the scholastic requirements for certificates, or to avoid the necessity for professional growth and development as a condition to promotions or advancement in the grade of certificates, are not only hostile to public welfare, but inimical to the best interests of the teachers themselves.

These are days of high prices-high cost of living, high priced land, and highly paid labor. The most expensive The cost of commodity of the present age, howignorance ever, is ignorance. Nor can the farmer, any more than those in any other vocation, afford to tolerate it. The rural teacher and the rural school are coming more and more to be two of the most valuable assets in any rural community. But the rural teacher must be able to fulfil his part of the contract; he must be prepared for the greater educational demands recently being placed on him.

Indeed, teachers are in these days being selected for the rural schools on a new and different basis from that New demands which has too often prevailed. The upon teachers time is now past for choosing a teacher because of his physical stature, or because he has a reputation for "cleaning out" some neighboring school. He is no longer favored because he happens to belong to a particular political party. And even the fact of his being a relative of an influential member of the school