Letter to a Teacher

You may want to reread the letter with which Pastor Allen opened his sermon yesterday, so I have reprinted it for you below. It comes from Haim Ginott's Teacher and Child, a book which has become a standard in teacher education.

Dear Teacher,

I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness:
Gas chambers built by learned engineers.
Children poisoned by educated physicians.
Infants killed by trained nurses.
Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.
So I am suspicious of education. My request is: Help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.

I thought it would be interesting to look at some of Ginott's other most oft-repeated quotations:

“Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.”

“I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.”

“Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.”

“If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.”

“Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn't have anything to do with it.”

“Fish swim, birds fly, and people feel.”

“Each of us carries within himself a collection of instant insults.”

If some of these phrases sound vaguely Biblical to us, we might consider that Ginott was Jewish, and probably familiar with Old Testament wisdom. Compare some of the verses below (from both Old and New Testaments):

Psalm 34:13
Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.

Psalm 52:2
The tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully.

Proverbs 10:20
The tongue of the just is as choice silver: the heart of the wicked is little worth.

Proverbs 15:4
A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit.

Proverbs 18:21
Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

James 3:6
And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

Proverbs 12:18
There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health.

Ephesians 4:15
But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:

Ephesians 4:31
Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

And, last but not least, from this week's sermon:

Ephesians 6:4
And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.