squarely in the face.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: An address to the graduating class of the Oswego, New York,
State Normal School, February, 1907.]

~II~

OPTIMISM IN TEACHING[2]

Although the month is March and not November, it is never unseasonable
to count up the blessings for which it is well to be thankful. In fact,
from the standpoint of education, the spring is perhaps the appropriate
time to perform this very pleasant function. As if still further to
emphasize the fact that education, like civilization, is an artificial
thing, we have reversed the operations of Mother Nature: we sow our seed
in the fall and cultivate our crops during the winter and reap our
harvests in the spring. I may be pardoned, therefore, for making the
theme of my discussion a brief review of the elements of growth and
victory for which the educator of to-day may justly be grateful, with,
perhaps, a few suggestions of what the next few years may reasonably be
expected to bring forth.

And this course is all the more necessary because, I believe, the
teaching profession is unduly prone to pessimism. One might think at
first glance that the contrary would be true. We are surrounded on every
side by youth. Youth is the material with which we constantly deal.
Youth is buoyant, hopeful, exuberant; and yet, with this material
constantly surrounding us, we frequently find the task wearisome and
apparently hopeless. The reason is not far to seek. Youth is not only
buoyant, it is unsophisticated, it is inexperienced, in many important
particulars it is crude. Some of its tastes must necessarily, in our
judgment, hark back to the primitive, to the barbaric. Ours is
continually the task to civilize, to sophisticate, to refine this raw
material. But, unfortunately for us, the effort that we put forth does
not always bring results that we can see and weigh and measure. The
hopefulness of our material is overshadowed not infrequently by its
crudeness. We take each generation as it comes to us. We strive to lift
it to the plane that civilized society has reached. We do our best and
pass it on, mindful of the many inadequacies, perhaps of the many
failures, in our work. We turn to the new generation that takes its
place. We hope for better materials, but we find no improvement.

And so you and I reflect in our occasional moments of pessimism that
generic situation which inheres in the very work that we do. The
constantly accelerated progres