must repeat another feature akin to that stamp: the predominance of languages over the sciences — languages being of the kind of mechanical, theoretical lessons — the stuffing of the pupil's mind with three languages, or two at the least, and the neglect of practical and manual instruction built upon experiment and the training of the senses. Whereas modern education demands exactly the opposite: it requires the predominance of the sciences and of the laboratory method, and the forming of the scientific, experimental spirit in the child from his first days at school.
Experience has taught me that the teacher's role must be confined to guiding the pupil, spurring him to personal study, and awakening his latent gifts.
I used to admire the girl student who was independent in her work and her thinking, whose personality showed in what she wrote and what she said, and who would dispute what the teacher said — not out of impudence, pretension, and a desire to show off, but out of a passion for going deep and searching things out. And I held little hope for the student who copies what I say, imitates what she hears, and clings blindly to methods and formulas.
It has also become clear to me that excellence in lessons and the winning of first place does not always mean superiority of intelligence and an aptitude for genius; more often it shows the pupil's capacity for memorizing, his appetite for competition, and his bondage to the matter of the book, in a manner that stuffs the brain and weakens the personality. As for true genius, it unfolds after leaving school, and shows itself in its possessor's capacity for creation and for intellectual production that rises above imitation and copying.
Were I asked which of the two kinds of teaching is the better, primary or secondary, I would prefer the first, because the child is then easier to mold, and nearer to simplicity and purity of soul.
And were I given the choice between teaching the secondary classes and directing a number of women teachers, I would prefer teaching to administration, for among the hardest things for a person is the humoring and training of grown people.
"Whoever taught me a letter, I became his slave": a saying that had its magic in times past. As for today, we bury it as we bury other sayings that ran upon the tongues of certain fainthearted folk and were passed around by people without their ever debating their truth or their error.
Nor do I know what factors spread such a saying abroad of old... Was it in an age when the learned were so few that he to whom God had granted the blessing of knowledge felt a crushing debt weighing upon his shoulders toward his teacher? Or was the teacher of yesterday — like the teacher of today — cheated in his wages, so that they tried to console him and cheer him with honeyed words and phrases of veneration, exactly as they do now: Stand for the teacher, render him full veneration — The teacher had almost become...!
Rose Ghorayeb's writing is not confined to the didactic vein, to thought and criticism; it passes beyond them to pure, delicate poetry, which has the freshness of dewy spring and the plaintiveness of music. The soul rests easy in the flow of its verses, in simplicity and elegance, and in a gentle realism! How like two canvases by a skilled painter are these two poems of Rose Ghorayeb!