It is to be welcomed with delight that the enthusiasm with which teachers seek to fulfill their wishes concerning rank and title is still exceeded by the enthusiasm with which, in recent times, they have striven to make a habit of employing a refined, educated tone and social graces. More than ever, it is regarded as necessary for each one of them to possess a kind of confidence and solidity in social intercourse that need never be denied anywhere, not even at the gambling table or on the dance floor, as a refined authority on tact puts it. Openness and truthfulness are supposed to be coupled with restraint and consideration, and outward appearance should degenerate into neither old-fashionedness nor the foppery of a dandy.
Despite the more comprehensive education of teachers, we do not fail to recognize that it will be difficult for a great many teachers, both now and later, to meet the demand that social tact should be an inherent part of a teacher’s character, something he observes unconsciously with the same assurance as a grammatical rule. How many are in a position to make up for a lack of interaction with educated company – especially with educated women – a deficit from which the development or maintenance of social tact always suffers? Even in recent times, teachers have not had sufficient opportunity for this. Their background, the training in a small town boarding school, life in a small rural community: all this is a deficit rather than a remedy. Nowadays, Präparandenanstalten and seminaries are more aware of their obligation to meet responsibilities in this area as well; more efforts ought to be made here and there, and headmasters as well as teachers would thus earn the warmest thanks from students. [ . . . ] Not without good reason does one detect the causes of many socially repulsive peculiarities of teachers in their propensity to assert their standing (with the pupils and also in their interactions with adults), to expect approval and agreement with all of their comments and judgments, to express disapproval in a very petty way, and to reveal the kind of knowledge that ultimately becomes a nuisance to anyone. It is this high-handed behavior that is called “schoolmasterly” in social intercourse and is despised as such. In this respect, too, increasing genuine education will also make itself felt as a liberating influence.
An essential part of a teacher’s social standing is his choice of a wife. Until now, we have perhaps paid too little attention to this question in the history of the teaching profession and have overlooked how much the teacher’s professional activity and his reputation in the town and in society depends on this. We have only mentioned that the authorities warned teachers about early marriage. In this context, one often ignores the fact that young teachers who end up in poor villages are often forced to set up house because they cannot find provisions for meals anywhere in the village. More effective than such warnings – which, by the way, were never received unfavorably by teachers – would certainly have been provisions for a comfortable income. Isn’t it profoundly regrettable that some teachers had to choose wives from the lower and uneducated classes because of their meager income? The refined way of speaking, the agreeable domesticity that is seen not only in one’s furnishings, but also in the way a family dines, can be better cultivated and maintained by no one other than an educated housewife. Therefore, one recognizes what a teacher has to forgo if his spouse ranks below him in terms of education. Not only his happiness, but quite often his entire influence in the village, depends on his wife. That is a point barely considered by those who have left the teacher in such meager circumstances that he was able neither to appreciate the value of refined women nor to make a claim to any such woman. [ . . . ] If teachers are struggling for better wages, they have certainly also set their sights on the magnificent prize of setting up house with a wife who is their equal in education and social standing. The benefit deriving from the Protestant rectory, that sanctuary of fine German morals and model of great domesticity, should radiate as much from the school, for the advantage of the entire community.
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