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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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