The Value of Teaching in an Ungraded School

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jul 2, 1908

The Value of Teaching in an Ungraded School

An Illustration

FORTY years ago the number of educated women was small everywhere. It was larger in Ohio than in most States, but not so large but that one might safely say of any well-prepared woman that she would probably become a teacher. This, Miss Thoburn became at the early age of eighteen. But though young in years, she was remarkably mature in judgment, and had that admirable admixture of frank kindliness with native leadership which enables its happy possessor to become at once the friend and guide of others. She, who was afterward to open the way to college education for Christian young women in India, began her experience as a humble country school-teacher in Ohio. And, indeed, it is no mean preparation for any place of usefulness in life to meet at life’s threshold the severe test of a “country schoolmarm’s” experiences. What tact and shrewdness and native force that experience calls for in any successful issue of it, only those know who have tried and either failed or succeeded. If we were advising a missionary candidate with suitable preparation, who, for any reason, is detained in the home land for a while, we would recommend a year’s experience in a country schoolroom as likely to exercise and develop all those qualities most needed in a foreign missionary.—Effective Workers in Needy Fields.