Good Breeding in Teachers, Part 3

Where the difference between American and English voices originated I am unable to say. To offset the results of imitation, schools for training of teachers should give more attention than they are now doing to training the voices of those who are to serve as models for the young. The burden of improvement lies with them. A teacher should be able to detect and assist in correcting unfortunate qualities in the voices of children; she at least should not be a “horrible example” of what should be avoided.

The Voice

Possibly you have heard a great artist sing a noble production in a foreign language. You did not understand a word, but you were enthralled by the beauty and power of her wonderful voice. Of all instruments of expression, the human voice is the most wonderful. We feel its possibilities when we hear a great singer or a great actor, but unfortunately we are too often neglectful of its value in common life. In America very little attention is given to the speaking voice, even in normal schools. This is a great mistake, and its results may be seen in almost any schoolroom.

I have seen teachers who would have been quite ideal had it not been for an unfortunate voice. I recall a delightful young woman, attractive in personality, charming in her relation to children, effective in handling both subject-matter and classes, whose work was marred by a sharp voice pitched several intervals above the normal. This one defect was such a serious handicap that I would not give her a place in a school under my charge. The harsh, strident voice with a suggestion of the cicada, the loud, metallic voice typical of the old-style stump orator, the weak, vanishing, ineffective voice which does not carry conviction, are other types common in the schoolroom. The difficulty of controlling a school is greatly augmented if the teacher's voice has no authority and resolution in it.

The unpleasant quality in the American voice has been often commented on both by foreigners and Americans who are familiar with the rich tones of the English women. The difference has been charged by some to climate, but I think it due rather to imitation. Children acquire tones of voice quite as they learn language, through imitation of what they hear. The English child has better models than has the American child. 

Where the difference between American and English voices originated I am unable to say. To offset the results of imitation, schools for training of teachers should give more attention than they are now doing to training the voices of those who are to serve as models for the young. The burden of improvement lies with them. A teacher should be able to detect and assist in correcting unfortunate qualities in the voices of children; she at least should not be a “horrible example” of what should be avoided.

It may seem to some that I am over-emphasizing what in reality are relatively insignificant items. Are social conventionalities and language and voice so very essential, after all, in the personality of a teacher? They certainly are, and for two very good reasons, in addition to the purely commercial ones which I mentioned at the opening of the chapter; first, they are refinements of life which the young should acquire. All right-minded parents want their children to possess them, and society in general desires its members to have them. They are social and economic assets to anyone who acquires them. They are therefore accomplishments to which a child has a clear right, and consequently should be taught in the school.

Unconscious Influence

The second reason why the teachers should possess these refinements lies in the manner by which they are most effectively taught by the teacher and taken on by the child; namely, through the unconscious life of the teacher and the unconscious imitation of the child. The tendency to imitate is one of the striking characteristics of children. It is one effective means of their adjustment to the world. They start life with no language, no manners, no methods of dealing with the situations they meet; but nature has given them the imitative instinct. They are unconsciously the keenest observers and the cleverest mimics, and, chameleon-like, easily take the color of their surroundings. 

Observe a group of children at play at “keeping house” or “keeping school” or “going calling” or “tea party,” and note how they reproduce the niceties of manner and voice which they have seen in their elders. Silently, as flowers drink in the dew, children absorb the manners of speech and behavior which they hear and see. Some things may be taught by rule and precept, but true refinement of character comes best by contagion. It is silently and unconsciously taken in.

I am not saying that direct instruction in manners and morals has no value, for I believe it has, but I am saying it will have little value if not reinforced by the daily unconscious life of the teacher; while, on the other hand, a refined teacher will infuse her ideals into her children though no word of precept be spoken. “It is worth the hour to be in her class in the presence of her charming and refined womanhood,” said a student of a certain teacher of literature.

“One lasting benefit I got from his class was an appreciation of beautiful English,” said another student of a teacher of psychology. Says Bishop Huntington: “Still another of the silent but formative agencies in education is that combination of physical signs and motions which we designate in the aggregate as manners.”

What I said of the way by which children acquire speech and manners is true of adults. We were once children. We are still children in that we are yet influenced by our surroundings. But we teachers are now old enough to determine to a considerable degree what elements in our environment we shall appropriate and what reject. I say “to a considerable degree,” for we are not omnipotent in this respect.– From “The Personality of the Teacher,” by Charles McKenny, 1910

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