3.3 Personality

“A great teacher is worth more to a state, though he teach by the roadside, than a faculty of mediocrities housed in Gothic piles.”—Chicago Tribune, September, 1919.

We may stress the sacred obligation of the teacher; we may discuss in detail mechanical processes involved in lesson preparation; we may analyze child nature in all of its complexity; but after all we come back to the Personality of the Teacher as the great outstanding factor in pedagogical success. That something in the man that grips people!

Very generally this Personal Equation has been looked upon as a certain indefinable possession enjoyed by the favored few. In a certain sense this is true. Personality is largely inherent in the individual and therefore differs as fully as do individuals.

But of recent years educators have carried on extensive investigations in this field of personality and have succeeded in reducing to comprehensible terms those qualities which seem to be most responsible for achievements of successful teachers.

Observation leads us all to similar deductions and constitutes one of the most interesting experiments open to those concerned with the teaching process.

Why, with the same amount of preparation, does one teacher succeed with a class over which another has no control at all?

Why is it that one class is crowded each week, while another adjourns for lack of membership?

The writer a short time ago, after addressing the members of a ward M.I.A., asked a group of scouts to remain after the meeting, to whom he put the question, “What is it that you like or dislike in teachers?” The group was a thoroughly typical group—real boys, full of life and equally full of frankness. They contributed the following replies:

• 1. We like a fellow that’s full of pep.
• 2. We like a fellow that doesn’t preach all the time.
• 3. We like a fellow that makes us be good.
• 4. We like a fellow that tells us new things.

Boylike, they were “strong” for pep—a little word with a big significance. Vigor, enthusiasm, sense of humor, attack, forcefulness—all of these qualities are summed up in these three letters.

And the interesting thing is that while the boys liked to be told new things, they didn’t want to be preached at. They evidently had the boy’s idea of preaching who characterized it as, “talking a lot when you haven’t anything to say.”

Still more interesting is the fact that boys like to be made to be good. In spite of their fun and their seeming indifference they really are serious in a desire to subscribe to the laws of order that make progress possible.

A principal of the Granite High School carried on an investigation through a period of four years to ascertain just what it is that students like in teachers. During those years students set down various attributes and qualities, which are summarized below just as they were given:

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