| THE RELATIONS BETWEEN TEACHERS AND THEIR PUPILS[1] |
By Principal H. A. MIERS, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S.
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION
TO preside over this section is to incur a responsibility which I confess somewhat alarms me; for the president may, by virtue of his temporary office, be regarded as speaking with authority on the subjects with which he deals. Now, it is my desire to speak about university education, and for this purpose I must say something of school education; but I would have it understood that I really know little about the actual conduct of modern school teaching. One may read books which describe how it should be conducted, but this is a very different thing from seeing and hearing the teacher in his class; and I fear that personal recollections of what teaching in preparatory and public schools was like from thirty to forty years ago do not qualify one to pose as an intelligent critic of the methods which now prevail.
Human nature, however, has not changed much in the last forty years, and if, in considering the relations between university and school education, I can confine myself to general principles, based upon the difference between boys and men, I trust that I may not go far wrong. I propose first to consider some general relations between teachers and their pupils, and then explain what, in my opinion, should be the change in the method of teaching, or at any rate in the attitude of teacher to pupil, which should take place when the scene changes from school to university.
First as to general relations between teachers and their pupils. Educational systems necessarily prescribe the same methods for different teachers, and, being made for the mass, ignore the individual. But happily, in spite of the attempts to formulate methods of instruction and to make precise systems, there are many, and those perhaps some of the most successful, in the army of earnest school teachers who are elaborating their own methods.
Now among all the changes and varieties of system and curriculum there is one factor which remains permanent and which is universally confessed to be of paramount importance—the individuality of the teacher and his personal influence upon the pupil. It is therefore a healthy sign when school teachers who have been trained on one system begin to develop their own methods, for in this they are asserting their
- ↑ Address to the Educational Science Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sheffield, 1910.
