解放军文职招聘考试The Personal Qualities of a Teacher

 The Personal Qualities of a Teacher

What personal qualities are desirable in a teacher? Probably no two people would write exactly similar lists, but I think the following would be generally accepted.

First, a teacher should be pleasantly live and attractive. This does not rule out people who are not good-looking or even ugly, because many such have great personal charm. But it does rule out such types as the over-excitable, dull, sad, cold-mannered, or any with other undesirable qualities.

Secondly, it is not only desirable but essential for a teacher to have real capacity for sympathy—a capacity to understand the minds and feelings of other people. Closely related with this is the capacity to be tolerant—not indeed of what is wrong, but of weakness of human nature which induce people, and especially children, to make mistakes.

I find it essential for a teacher to be a bit of an actor. That is part of the technique of teaching, which demands that every now and then a teacher should put on an act to make his lesson interesting and vivid. Children, especially young children live in a world that is rather larger than life.

A teacher must be capable of great patience. This, I may say, is largely a matter of self-training. We are none of us born like that. Teaching makes great demands on nervous energy and one should be able to take in his stride countless small irritations any adult dealing with children has to endure.

Finally, I think a teacher should have the kind of mind which always wants to go on learning. Teaching is a job at which one will never be perfect; there is always something more to learn about it. There are three main subjects of study: the subject or subjects which the teacher is teaching; the methods by which they can best be taught to the pupils in the classes he is teaching ; —by far the most important—the children, young people or adults to whom they are to be taught. The two main principles of British education today are that education is education of the whole person, and that is best acquired through full and active cooperation between two persons, the teacher and the learner.