TEACHING PROFESSION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 4 June 1938, Page 27

TEACHING PROFESSION

PLACE IN MODERN WORLD

INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER

ADDRESS BY DR J. N. FINDLEY

A somewhat unusual conception of the functions of a school teacher in a modern social system and the state of the teaching profession in the world to-day was given by Dr J. N. Findlay in Etn address to the Otago branch of the New Zealand Educational Institute yesterday afternoon.

Dr Findlay opened his address by mentioning three conceptions of the function of a teacher in a modern social system. The first, exalted and idealistic, regarded a teacher as someone who imparted to his pupils a certain living art or technique which would enable them to solve their own problems as they arose; he transferred to them a method of thought rather than a body of factual material. This conception of a teacher’s function went back to the Platonic Academy, but had been greatly strengthened in modern times by the German Romantic conception of education as self-activity, which had affected so much of the practice of the modern school. It was doubtful, however, whether a pure technique of thinking would be transferred to other people without also transferring a number of presuppositions and descriptions: it was also clear that there was no technique of thinking equally applicable to all problems and situations without exception. This led on to a second less exalted conception of a teacher as, in the main, an economic device, which abridged the process of learning, and taught his pupils the ropes of the natural and social world to which they belonged, and then left them to cope with it for themselves. There could be little doubt that this more prosaic office is the one performed by teachers during the greater part of their existence. It also represented the necessary minimum of a teacher’s functions, in order that he should be worth maintaining at all, as opposed to the higher and more inspirational functions which make a man a good teacher.

Teachers as Propagandists

Dr Findlay maintained that every teacher was also, in the third place a propagandist, a moulder of the soul, who introduced to his pupils a specific set of interpretation and valuations which were current in a given society, or which it was desired should become current. This function of a teacher involved profound dangers, but could not, on that account,- be wholly eliminated. It was impossible to avoid a bias in education or in any other activity. The wholly unbiassed person was merely a person who had acquired a powerful bias in favour of fencesitting, an activity sometimes admirable, but often reprehensible. In Fascist education, however, soulmoulding had usurped all the other functions of a teacher. The teacher had to present a world-view neither true nor accurate, but so modified and stylised as to set certain features in high relief and to suppress or distort others, a world-view soaked throughout in certain emotional colourings, which were admitted to be irrational and fanatical. The Fascist States would probably end by succumbing to the delusions which they themselves had deliberately fostered and inculcated. In any creative society the propagandist element in education must necessarily be far outweighed by the critical element; positive attitudes must be transferred, but also the ability to criticise and modify those attitudes. Only by such criticism did society develop. \. In New Zealand, Dr Findlay went on to maintain, educational policy was possibly somewhat confused. It was not clear that the material selected was altogether such as to teach pupils the ropes of the modem world; it was not clear that the soulmoulding was on genuinely New Zealand lines, and it seemed to be the case that the higher possibilities of teaching were often sacrificed to senseless rigours of red tape.

Effects on Character

The speaker next dealt with the bad effects of occupationalism on the general character of teachers. The division of labour, supposedly necessary to efficiency, had bad effects on all sections of society, and certainly not least on the teaching profession. The much-discussed bad-

ness of attending to a single screw in Mr Ford’s works had certainly its parallel in the constant converse with immature minds which teaching largely involved. After years of practice the teacher leamt to treat boys and men as if they were mental cases. To some extent the university teacher had an outlet in research to revalorise his watereddown humanity, but in New Zealand that outlet was not sufficiently large. How this occupational problem could be solved, how teachers could remain men. was certainly a serious problem. Fortunately, one was surrounded on all sides by people who had been even less successful in retaining their humanity than had teachers. Teachers should in any case strenuously resist any attempt to make them lose such humanity as they had succeeded in retaining. They were not to uecome mere servants of public bodies, denied the rights of ordinary citizens, and thought to be less capable of pronouncing on social policies than other occupational groups who believed themselves to live in the thick of real life.

In fact, the speaker contended, the teaching profession represented a superior stratum of intelligence and conscientiousness, which failed to have a proper social and economic dignity because it was lacking in those hustling tendencies which the modem world tended to over-value. Teachers should remember this, and resist any tendency to treat as menial or insignificant their magnificent profession.