QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1.  Do most teachers realize to what extent they have influence?

2.  Is it comfortable to think that one is an example?  If not, why not?  Is it only teachers who need to feel that they are examples?  Is it fair to demand a higher standard of the teacher and preacher?

3.  Give from your own experience instances in which you have absorbed an ideal which has persisted.  Is there danger of adopting an ideal that, while it is worthy as far as it goes, is merely incidental and not worth while? (Such are an accurate memory of unimportant details, certain finesse in manners and speech, punctiliousness in engagements, exhaustiveness in shopping before making purchases, perfection in penmanship and other arts at the expense of speed:  suggest others.)

4.  How can the contemplation of a rainbow educate?  What education should result from a view of Niagara Falls?

5.  What qualities would a teacher have to possess that her influence aside from her teaching might be of more value than the teaching itself?

6.  That one may have influence is it enough for one to be good, or is it what one does that counts?  Suggest lines of action for a teacher that would increase her influence for good.

7.  Explain how a fine unconscious influence exerted by a teacher helps to keep pupils in school.

8.  In Hawthorne’s story of the Great Stone Face what qualities were attained by those whom Ernest expected to grow into the likeness?

9.  Why did Ernest’s face come to resemble that of the great stone face?

10.  In what ways is good fiction of value to teachers?

11.  Cite something that you have gained from the unconscious influence of another.

12.  What attainments or qualities have you yet to acquire in order to stand out as “distinctive and regnant” to a good many pupils?

13.  A bacteriologist makes a “culture” of a drop of blood, multiplying many times the bacteria in it, to determine whether serious disease germs are prevalent.  If the influence of a person could be observed in a large way, would that be conclusive as to the person’s character, just as the result of the culture proves the condition of the blood?  May there not be an obscure element in the teacher’s character that is having a deleterious effect?  Or is it only the outstanding features of his conduct that affect the pupils?

14.  Why is it more important to acquire ideals than to acquire knowledge?

15.  Describe the attitude of the teacher toward the pupils in the “vitalized” school.

16.  Show how the teacher should have in view the future of the pupils.

17.  Is it a compliment to be easily recognized as a teacher?  Why or why not?

18.  Just what is meant by “narrowness” in a teacher?  What is meant by “bigness”?  What is their effect if the teacher is taken as an ideal?