isa-normaladvance-1914-00028

Description:	28THE NORMAL ADVANCE{Eeatfnng anb Ceacijers A CHAPEL TALK, JUNE 5, 1913. CHARLES R. DRYER.IN the fall of 13T2 I undertook for the first time to teach school. It was in a one- roomed school house, built of cobble stones, on the top of one of the broad shouldered, whale- backed hills of western New York, where my mother had been a pupil, and a brother and a sister had previously won reputations for good teaching. It stood in large and well kept grounds which formed the forecourt of theCHARLES R. DRYERcemetery, where the pioneers of the community, among them my grandfathers grandmother, slept. Had I been a Japanese I would have been conscious that the ancestral spirits were at hand to incite and support me. I walked three miles to school in the morning and home at night, most of the way across the fields, along the slopes of ample hills, skirting the edge of the woods, crossing the little brook in the valley and climbing the last long rise be¬ tween the sites of vanished strongholds once held by the savage Iroquois, but demolished by the Marquis Denonville, Governor General of New France, nearly two centuries before. It was a wide and inspiring landscape withmore of historic association than our infantile country usually affords. My fancies filled with Indian braves in war paint and feathers, with long-robed Jesuit priests and with plumed Knights of the Grand Monarch, furnished ma¬ terials for a chapter from Parkmans France in the New World. The story opens with a good setting, but stops there. There was no story. After three weeks in this country school I was captured and carried off to the union and classical school of a town in a dis¬ tant part of the countjfy, which I have always thought especially fortunate, because if I had not left the old stone school house the boys might have turned me out before Christmas.Ever since that time, with the exception of five years, I have been a school teacher. I mention this only as an apology for presenting to you some thoughts which are not new, but which have grown out of that experience.You all intend to be school teachers. The majority, I presume, look forward to a few years of teaching as a stepping stone to some other and more attractive calling. For such I have no word of criticism or deprecation. It is well that so many are willing to make the preparation necessary to perform acceptably a task so delicate, so high, so specialized. So¬ cial and economic expediency decrees that the rank and file of teachers shall be female celi¬ bates, a new order of nuns, under tacit vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. It seems not to have occurred to school authorities that the ideal teacher of children would be the experi¬ enced mother of a family. Such become eligi¬ ble only by widowhood. I always feel like taking off my hat to the modern vestals who are willing to efface themselves and become as little children, in the successful management of
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/32468
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

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