The
teacher is the agent; the patrons represented in these several ways are
the principals. When, therefore, in the following paragraphs I use the
word _employers_, I mean to be understood to speak of the committee, or
the trustees, or the visitors, or the parents themselves, as the case in
each particular institution may be; that is, the persons for whose
purpose and at whose expense the institution is maintained, or their
representatives.
Now there is a very reasonable and almost universally established rule,
which teachers are very frequently prone to forget, namely, _the
employed ought always to be responsible to the employers, and to be
under their direction._ So obviously reasonable is this rule, and, in
fact, so absolutely indispensable in the transaction of all the business
of life, that it would be idle to attempt to establish and illustrate it
here. It has, however, limitations, and it is applicable to a much
greater extent, in some departments of human labor than in others. It is
_applicable_ to the business of teaching, and though I confess that it
is somewhat less absolute and imperious here, still it is obligatory, I
believe, to a far greater extent than teachers have been generally
willing to admit.
A young lady, I will imagine, wishes to introduce the study of Botany
into her school. The parents or the committee object; they say that they
wish the children to confine their attention exclusively to the
elementary branches of education.
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