Education: Petition for Pedagogs

Petition for Pedagogs

Last week in the Journal of the National Education Association appeared “A Prayer for Teachers,” by President Glenn Frank of the University of Wisconsin, onetime (1921-25) Editor of Century Magazine. Acutely aware of teacher failings, in part he prayed:

“O Lord of Learning and of Learners, we are at best but blunderers in this Godlike business of teaching. Our shortcomings shame us, for we are not alone in paying the penalty for them; they have a sorry immortality in the maimed minds of those whom we, in our blundering, mislead. We have been content to be merchants of dead yesterdays, when we should have been guides into unborn tomorrows. We have put conformity to old customs above curiosity about new ideas. We have thought more about our subject than about our object. We have been peddlers of petty accuracies, when we should have been priests and prophets of abundant living. We have schooled our students to be clever competitors in the world as it is, when we should have been helping them to become creative cooperators in the making of the world as it is to be. … From these sins of sloth may we be free. . . . May we be shepherds of the spirit as well as masters of the mind. . . .”

For permission to reprint the Frank prayer, the Journal paid the McClure Newspaper Syndicate $35, of which about 50% was forwarded to the author. Since 1925, President Frank has bolstered his income by syndicating daily apothegms in the Chicago Daily News, the Atlanta Journal, the Birmingham News, the St. Louis Star and some 70 other newspapers.