What Makes a Teacher

What personal qualities are desirable in a teacher? I think the following would be generally accepted.

First, the teacher's personality should be lively and attractive. This does not rule out people who are plain-looking, or even ugly, because many such people have great personal charm. But it does rule out such types as the over-excitable, sad, cold, and frustrated.

Secondly, it is not merely desirable but essential for a teacher to have a genuine capacity for sympathy, a capacity to understand the minds and feelings of other people, especially, since most teachers are school teachers, the minds and feelings of children. Closely related with this is the capacity to be tolerant—not, indeed, of what is wrong, but of the weaknesses and immaturity of human nature which induce people, and again especially children, to make mistakes.

Thirdly, I hold it essential for a teacher to be both intellectually and morally honest. This means that he will be aware of his intellectual strengths and limitations, and will have thought about and decided upon the moral principles by which his life shall be guided. There is no contradiction in my going on to say that a teacher should be a bit of an actor. That is part of the technique of teaching, which demands that every now and then a teacher should be able to put on an act to enliven a lesson, correct a fault, or award praise. Children, especially young children, live in a world that is rather larger than life.

A teacher must be capable of infinite patience. This, I may say, is largely a matter of self-discipline and self-training, for we are none of us born like that.

Finally, I think a teacher should have the kind of mind which always wants to go on learning. Teaching is a job at which one will never be perfect; there is always something more to learn about it. There are three principal objects of study: the subjects which the teacher is teaching; the methods by which the subjects can best be taught to the particular pupils in the classes he is teaching; and—by far the most important—the children, young people, or adults to whom the subjects are to be taught. The two fundamental principles of British education today are that education is education of the whole person, and that it is best acquired through full and active cooperation between two persons, the teacher and the learner.

Short Answer Questions

1. Plain-looking teachers can also be admired by their students if they have ____.
2. The author says it is ____ that teachers be sympathetic with their students.
3. A teacher should be tolerant because humans tend to have ____ and to be ____.
4. A teacher who is ____ will be able to make his lessons more lively.
5. How can a teacher acquire infinite patience?
6. Since teaching is a job no one can be perfect at, it is necessary for teachers to keep improving their knowledge of the subjects they teach and their ____.
7. Education cannot be best acquired without ____ between the teacher and the learner.

(Keys.)