Tennyson knew and expressed this conception in the quotation already
given, but we have not acquired the habit of consulting the poets and
novelists for our pedagogy. When we learn to consult these, we shall
find them expressing many tenets of pedagogy that are basic.
=The testimony of experience.=--But we need not go beyond our own
experiences to realize that much of our education has been unconsciously
gained, that we have absorbed much of it, and, possibly, what we now
regard as the most vital part of it. We have but to explore our own
experiences to discover some person whose standards have been effective
in luring us out of ourselves and causing us to yearn toward higher
levels; who has been the beacon light toward which our feet have been
stumbling; who has been the pattern by which we have sought to shape our
lives; and for whom we feel a sense of gratitude that cannot be
quenched. The influence of that person has been a liberal education in
the vital things that the books do not teach, and we shudder to think
what we might have been had that influence not come into our lives. This
ideal is not some mythical, far-away person, but a real man or woman who
has challenged our admiration by looks, by conduct, by position, and by
general bearing in society.
=The one teacher.=--This preliminary part of the subject has been dwelt
upon thus at length in an effort to win assent to the general
proposition that unconscious education is not only possible, but an
actuality.
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