The Reconstructed School by Francis B. Pearson
page 105 of 113 (92%)
page 105 of 113 (92%)
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it to serve a high purpose. Whatever study she found helpful, this she
used as a means with gratitude and gladness. If she found the book ill adapted to her purpose, she sought or wrote another. If pictures proved more potent than books, the galleries obeyed the magic of her skill and yielded forth their treasures. She yearned to have her pupil win the goals before him; everything was grist that came to her mill if only it would serve her purpose. She disdained nothing that could afford nourishment to the spirit of the child and give him zeal, courage, and strength for the upward journey. If more arithmetic was needful, she found it; if more history, she gave it; and if the book on geography was inadequate, she supplemented from libraries or from her own abundant storehouse of knowledge. She dared to deviate from the course of study, if thereby the child might more certainly win the goals toward which she ever looked and worked. In the boy, she saw a poet, a philosopher, a prophet, an artist, a musician, a statesman, or a philanthropist, and she worked and prayed that the artist in the child might not die but that he might grow to stalwart manhood to glorify the work of her school. In each girl she saw another Ruth, or Esther, or Cordelia, or Clara Barton, or Frances Willard, or Florence Nightingale, or Rosa Bonheur, or Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Browning. And her heart yearned over each one of these and strove with power to nourish them into vigorous life that they might become jewels in her crown of rejoicing. She must not allow one to perish through her ignorance or malpractice, for she would keep her soul free from the charge of murder. And in the fullness of manhood and womanhood her pupils achieved the full symphony of life. They had won the goals toward which their teacher had been leading. Their spiritual qualities had converged and become life, and they had attained the super-goal. In the joy of their achievement their teacher repeated the words of her own Teacher, "I am come that they might |
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