An Ideal Teacher
A teacher’s profession is an ideal profession. Yet all teachers are not ideal. There are many who are angry, beat students, scold them right and left, do not look neat in appearance, have no affection for students, are interested only in increasing their income, keep no touch with books, and are too much inclined to politics. With the society going to the dogs, such teachers are ever on the increase.
Certainly they have no right to be treated as ideal teachers for no students, except the worst, would like to build their lives of them.
This shows that very few teachers can rightly claim to be accepted as ideal ones. There are some who possess many qualities that make them to be likely claimants to this honorable position but a few shortcomings shatter their hopes to pieces. This shows that an ideal teacher is not someone to be found here, there and everywhere. He is really a rare object, and very few schools can boast to have such a teacher in their staff-list. If we are to describe an ideal teacher in a few words, we must say that he should have the ability to serve as a model before his students.
Qualities of an Ideal Teacher
An ideal teacher, above all, should be a good teacher. His teaching ability should be such so as to attract the attention of the students easily. He should teach in a way so that any topic, however hard it may be, can be easily understood by the students.
In order to teach well, the teacher himself should have vast and deep knowledge.
He must be Able to clear away students’ fear of studies and to turn them into store-houses of knowledge without which a refined and higher life cannot be lived.
An ideal teacher should have unbounded love and affection for his students.
He should be one who can be easily approached by them, for he should truly be their friend, philosopher, and guide.
If a student does something wrong and regrets it sincerely, the teacher, instead of punishing him, should deal so tactfully with him that the wrong-dear will ever refrain from doing such things in future.
However, if the fault is genuine and there is no regret for it, the teacher will not hesitates to take stern measures against such an action. He will not allow discipline to be given the good-bye for the sake of showing love to a student.
He should be able to inculcate certain virtues among students, such as regular studies, punctuality, care of health, equal emphasis on reading and writing, perseverance, kindheartedness, and the like.
