Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/381

THE FEEEDOM OF THE TEACHER TO TEACH RELIGION. 367 easy to direct. But not so the artist. "It takes a soul to- move a body." The artist must have knowledge and inspira- tion. He must be a cultured personality. The artist-teacher, i.e. the educationist, must have a world of sympathetic im- agination joined with a well-equipped and disciplined intellect. He must believe in the work of teaching as one of the most interesting and urgent of humanistic functions in the com- monwealth. He must care for the intellectual and moral development of his pupils more than for his particular views or predilections in all subjects. It is the mental activity of his pupils with which he is concerned, which he wishes to- help not the propaganda of any sectional views of his own either in science, history, or religion. This is simply what is meant by being an educationist-teacher. It is reasonable to demand that all teachers shall be educationists. What is necessary for the accomplishment of such a desirable result, is that the country should be pre- pared to pay the price necessary to draw men of a sufficient mental and social power into this great work. " But we cannot trust the teachers in so important a matter as religion." No. That is the root of the matter. The subjects of the curriculum, the syllabus of the subjects,, must be drawn up or controlled by local Education Com- mittees acting under their officials, who may never have taught in a school. The work of teaching must be inspected by Inspectors who may never have taught in a school, or be examined by examiners who have perhaps never entrusted themselves with a class of children in their lives before they took up their present occupation of inspecting or examining. It would accordingly seem that teachers cannot indeed be trusted in the larger or even in the smaller matters of their craft though their overseers are certain to have clear in- sight. Supposing we said : Doctors cannot be trusted in matters of life and death. Indeed, in the smaller matters of their art, they ought to be supervised for it is of importance to the commonwealth that people's bodies should be care- fully dealt with when out of order. Supposing at critical moments medical Inspectors, without medical experience, came on the scene, on surprise visits, would such action give- fair play to the physician who had made his diagnosis, and . carefully considered the previous history of his patient?' The wonder is, that the teachers have accomplished so much under such a system. For like the artisans, whom the system forces them to resemble, they are supervised by their Foreman, called the Inspector, though unlike the manual artisan, without having the security of the ordinary