THE PROFESSION OF TEACHING "It will be generally admitted that the teachers of children and youth, while not the sole instruments, are by far the most influential instruments through which a people may consciously control its future. They determine in great part both the extent and the degree to which sound fundamental ideas pervade, unite, and move a people." This quotation from the Fourteenth Bulletin of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching sets forth the basic reason for the demand and the hope that teaching shall become a profession. The measure of the public recognition and reward of teachers is the measure of public concern for the greatness of the nation and its permanence. If teaching is not a career to which the best men and women of the community are attracted and in which they find satisfaction, we "abandon the future. . . to secondrate minds." The articles in this section deal with some of the problems of teaching as a career and as an art. They do not deal with one problem which is involved in making teaching attractive to men and women of vigorous mentality— the problem of organizing and conducting schools so that all teachers shall participate in the formulation of educational policies. Only a teacher who knows education, its problems as a science and its problems as an agency of social progress, can serve effectively in a system of schools in which the whole corps of teachers unites, under leader ship, in the continuous improvement of the organization, the curriculum, and the methods of the institution. Only a system so organized is educationally alive or ready to serve the community with power and assurance. The problem of training teachers for the schools of a democracy becomes, therefore, a problem of developing teachers not only as scholars and skillful practitioners, but also as educators. Teachers should be mindful of their need for knowledge and for skill in teaching as an art, but mindful also of their need for an understanding of education as a whole. Young people who catch the vision of a scientific approach to educational problems and who see before them the chance to take part in the improvement of the schools by virtue of their training in education, will not hesitate to enter the profession. PLAIN TALK TO TEACHERS A. R. BRUBACHER I THE "learned professions" were once an inner circle of distinction. Every family cherished the ambition to have representation in this court of honor. Divinity, Law, and Medicine, these three, and the greatest was probably Divinity. Greatness was not yet measured in cash-value, nor did the proletariat regard these distinctions as invidious. Not yet. Now we have new aspirants for place in the inner circle. Engineering professes a body of special knowledge and expert experience; special schools alone can give this knowledge; and the trained engineer renders a specialized service to society. And nursing. Who shall deny that nursing demands special knowledge, and that it renders important service to society? Then there are the social workers, business engineers of various kinds, philanthropists and teachers. Some will have it that not all philanthropists are teachers, but that all teachers are philanthropists. Shall all these be recognized as professions? The exclusiveness of the inner circle is in danger. The term "learned" may have to be abandoned. Or, possibly, terms of initiation can be defined in such a way that some may qualify and others not. What is a profession, then? Samuel Johnson defines it merely as a "vocation, known employment, a calling." This, of course, includes shoeshining. Surely teaching is not behind shoe-shining in its |