ABSTRACT
W E have studied the various impersonal forces —the home, the Church, the school, and the university-which are engaged in making citizens, and we now come to the personal factor, to the teacher himself. We may recall the words of Guizot in introducing an Education Bill to the French Chamber of Deputies in 1833 : "All the provisions hitherto described would be of no effect if we took no pains to procure for the school thus constituted an able master worthy of the high vocation of instructing the people. It cannot be too often repeated that it is the master that makes the school.55 To this we may add that it is the parent who makes the home, and the priest who makes the Church. The question of how to train the parent or the priest for their educational functions, is an interesting and important one : but it cannot be dealt
with here. I would only say this about the parent : as a schoolmaster I have often felt that the education of fathers and mothers is as important as the education of their sons : many a man and his wife are genuinely anxious to play their part as teachers, and are prepared to make any sacrifices and to take any amount of trouble : but they fail (and nobody bewails their failure more than themselves) through sheer ignorance of how to set about the task. Any help that could be given them from any source-whether in the form of books, pamphlets, lectures, parents' associations, or in any other way-would be warmly welcomed. As for the training of the priest, some observations on the subject have been made in the third chapter, and to these I would only add that if it were possible for him to have some years' experience in other walks of life before taking his Orders, I believe he would be much more competent for the problems which will confront him : I hold the same view, as will be seen, with regard to the professional teacher.
