A Rare Monument
We found it in the courthouse square in Laurinburg the other
day. It is a monument erected to a teacher. That’s why it’s rare.
Monuments to teachers are fairly common here and there in
Europe, but they are rare in America. In North Carolina there are only four
that we can now recall—to Wiley in Winston-Salem, to McIver in the capitol
square in Raleigh, to Quackenbush in Laurinburg, and to Canady in Smithfield.
If there are others we want to know about them.
The inscriptions on the Laurinburg shaft are worth thinking
over. In particular they challenge the attention of teachers. Here they are:
“William Graham
Quackenbush, 1649-1903
Principal of the
school here for 21 years
Christian, scholar,
philanthropist
In recognition of his
exalted character, in appreciation of his ennobling influence upon youth
Erected by a people
grateful for his love and service
His life was gentle
and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the
world, This was a man.”
Why So Rare?
We have said that such monuments are rare and there are
reasons, many reasons, but just now we center attention on one—the lack of
stable citizenship in teachers.
More and more teachers are creatures of chance and change. Few
of us are content to choose a community for better or for worse, and to drive
our tent-pegs deep down for permanent residence. We are here today and there
tomorrow. We shift about incessantly under the pressure of necessity or the
lure of opportunity. We are nowhere long enough for a community to find out how
the elements are mixed in us and whether we are men or manikins. Teachers blow
into and out of American communities like a swarm of Kansas grasshoppers. The
hard truth is, our tax-supported schools of every grade are cursed by a very
plague of grasshopper teachers. We are become a race of peripatetics. Ichabod
Crane and his ilk were far more innocent and far less mischievous as public
servants. We are creatures without a country, without homes of our own, without
much property of any sort on the tax books, without identity and civic
consequence in swiftly changing communities, without any robust sense of local
citizenship and community responsibility. For the most part we are rolling
stones that gather no moss. We are drifters and wasters, in a sense that is
arresting and appalling.
Disturbing Facts
Lest it be supposed that we are dreaming instead of dealing
with distressing realities we may say that a full third of the teachers of
America drop out of the ranks every years—during the recent years of war the
ratio rose to nearly a half; that the roster of an adjoining county last year
shows two-thirds of the country schools with brand new teachers, while in our
own home county three-fourths of the country teachers are this year teaching
new schools and three-fourths of the country communities have new teachers!
Will someone please tell us how schools of permanent and
increasing influence can be developed with kaleidoscopic changes of this sort?
This incessant change of teachers in town and country corps is the curse of our
American public school system—the most fruitful source of failure. It is the
one certain way of wasting 800 millions of public school money or most of it
year by year by year.
Teachers now as of old are frequently men and women of
exalted Christian character, lovers of learning, and lovers of their kind as
Quackenbush was, but it seems to be no longer the fashion for teachers to teach
21 years in one place. They dwell nowhere long enough to breed grateful
memories in a community and to lie down at last under the shadow of a memorial
shaft.
On the contrary the telegram of the Irish engineer records
our careers or commonly so: Off agin, on agin, gone agin, Flanagin. A monument
erected to a teacher of this sort would have to be built on the tail of a
flying machine.
Where the Blame Lies
We perfectly well know that the explanation of this sorry
situation concerns communities as well as teachers—living conditions in
communities as well as saving salt in teachers, but for the moment we are
thinking about monuments to teachers and the essential reason for their rarity.
The teacher who is forever on the move like poor Jo in Bleak
House will certainly miss a monument. It is easy to erect monuments to men like
Wiley and McIver, Quackenbush and Canady, Graham, Stacy and Battle. They were
firmly anchored to definite localities and identified with definite noble
purposes.
The public is rarely ever fooled. Consciously or
unconsciously it makes Susan Nipper’s distinction between a Temporary and a
Permanent. Most of us are temporary, few of us, alas, are permanent. The
Temporaries swiftly pass out of men’s minds and memories. Monuments are erected
to Permanents alone.
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