For the Teachers

"In urging a method of self-education for children in lieu of the vicarious education which prevails, I should like to dwell on the enormous relief to teachers, a self-sacrificing and greatly overburdened class; the difference is just that between driving a horse that is light and a horse that is heavy in hand; the former covers the ground of his own gay will and the driver goes merrily.  The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding."  -- Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

Do we as teachers know any differently?  How many teachers DON'T know what it feels like to have to push, pull, bite and claw to get a student to take their studies seriously?  How many teachers have the love of teaching pummelled out of them by nothing more than the relentless, day-in-and-day-out message that is sent both verbally and non-verbally from the students that nothing on earth could be less interesting or important than what the teacher is attempting to impart to them?  Could we have made a bigger mistake in this country's attempt to educate our youth than to lay the entire burden of education at the feet of the teachers, instead of the place where the burden actually exists: solidly on the student?  Such a mentality was more understandable in an age when books were rare and college-educated teachers were even more sparse, although it was arguably still misguided.  Today, there is absolutely no excuse for it.  But anyone who would blame the students for their abysmal lack of initiative in claiming their intellectual birthright is missing two thirds of the picture.  For that, you must look to the parents, who are usually far more concerned about grades than understanding (if they are concerned at all, that is), and to a school system that insists on intellectually starving students while figuratively beating them into a very literal behavioral submission.