I think I shall be able to find some apt quotation from
Emerson before the time for the speech comes around. If so, I shall
use it so as to take their minds off the fact that I am taking the
speech from Doctor Durell's book.
CHAPTER IX
SCHOOL-TEACHING
The first school that I ever tried to teach was, indeed, fearfully
and wonderfully taught. The teaching was of the sort that might well
be called elemental. If there was any pedagogy connected with the
work, it was purely accidental. I was not conscious either of its
presence or its absence, and so deserve neither praise nor censure.
I had one pupil who was nine years my senior, and I did not even know
that he was retarded. I recall quite distinctly that he had a
luxuriant crop of chin-whiskers but even these did not disturb the
procedure of that school. We accepted him as he was, whiskers
included, and went on our complacent way. He was blind in one eye
and somewhat deaf, but no one ever thought of him as abnormal or
subnormal. Even if we had known these words we should have been too
polite to apply them to him.
Pages:
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74