Play the game … but be a man!
'…TO MY fellow teachers,
I wish to address myself next. Our task is a noble one, although
fraught with great consequences. True, it has been said that "the
hand that rocks the cradle rules the world" but today a teacher
is in loco parentis, for the child is under his care and instruction
for quite a time.
I think we can achieve very little in our work unless we know
why we are teaching them. That is, we must know what the general
purpose in education is. I cannot do better than quote the words
of Mr George Sampson who wrote in John O'London's Weekly:
"That purpose is precisely, general culture. We should aim
at producing articulate, intelligible human beings, able to inherit
the past, to possess the present, and confront the future, capable,
if they choose, of living a liberal life in any calling or in
any circumstances. There is no kind of antagonism between manual
labour and a liberal life, or between a scanty purpose and a full
mind. Education must teach us the only communism possible in
this world, a communism in things spiritual and intellectual."
And the writer continues to tell us what we must try to do: "If
by the time they are fourteen we have given our children the beginnings
of command over their own language, if we have taught them how
they can learn and go on learning what specially interests them,
if we have taught them how much loveliness there is for them to
enjoy, if we have taught them to be grateful and comely in person
and behaviour, if we have taught them to hate laziness and dirt
and cruelty, if we have taught them a sense of personal and corporate
responsibility, we have taught them the elements of the greatest
of all vocations, the vocation of being members of Christ, children
of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven."
For my part I am going to read these lines over and over again
this year, so that I may not fail in my "high calling"
but may know why I go to school 200 days of the year to face a
crowd of young minds. I will not forget to teach them Geography
and Grammar and Geometry, and yet, I will take as much interest
in those things that really matter so that when they leave school
they may feel with [R. L.] Stevenson that "the world is so
full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy
as kings".
To complete the circle of my readers, I must write something for
the students of our schools. I hope that a large measure of success
and happiness will be yours this year. You will want to grow "in
wisdom and stature". You will therefore be keen and anxious
to participate in all the activities of your school, for that
is the only way to build up your character.
Do not shirk any responsibility, but be glad that you are given
an occasion when you can develop initiative and leadership. Take
seriously any job your friends or teachers give you, whether that
be the Captaincy of the Football XI, or Presidency of the Debating
Society, or the leadership of a patrol of Scouts. Count it an
honour and see to it that you put your heart and soul into these
offices. Being 100% "true hearted and wholehearted"
will spell success, not only in your work in school, but also
in your future calling.
To conclude, how about this for a motto:
"Play the game;
Win if you can,
Lose if you must,
But be a man!" '
-- MM, February 1926, p.9.
Earnest Lau, the Associate Editor of Methodist Message, is also the Archivist of The Methodist Church in Singapore.