THE
P RTAL
July 2012
Page 13
The inestimable value
of a Good Teacher
by Brother Sean of The Work
If we
were to reflect on individuals who, throughout our lives, had in some way influenced the opinions
we now hold and the decisions we have taken, many of us would be able to form quite a considerable list.
Of course there were parents who nurtured our faith, friends with whom we shared interests, and perhaps
impressive figures in history to whom we aspired.
Yet I am sure that those people who produced the
most profound influence on the development of our
convictions were our teachers. While not replacing
the primary educative role of parents, teachers appear
to us in adolescence as that objective outsider who
nurtures the mind to reflect, decide and act. Quite
simply, a good teacher is of inestimable value.
earnestness with which he seems to pray for me, and
the readiness he ever manifested to assist me in any
object I had in view.’
important theological questions
In the Apologia Newman recounted Mayers’
‘conversations and sermons’, as well as the ‘books that
he put into my hands’ as effecting his first religious
spiritual conversion
conversion at the age of 15. Newman’s Letters and
Newman’s early religious development is dominated Diaries attest to the frequent correspondence between
by the influence exercised by his Evangelical school the two, revealing how Newman turned to Mayers
master Walter Mayers. Newman described him as ‘the for direction on a number of important theological
human means of the beginning of divine faith in me’, questions which he was wrestling with. More
and of, ‘one to whom I am so much indebted.’ Mayers’ importantly Mayers supplied Newman with authors
way of faith was not altogether dissimilar to Newman’s. which formed his early opinions on questions of
doctrine.
Born in Gloucester in 1790 he excelled in classics
and went up to Oxford in 1808. Towards the end of
While Newman would later develop, and even
his studies Mayers underwent a spiritual conversion relinquish, some of the opinions he had gained from
which led him to Anglican orders. In 1814 a narrow his former master, he remained indebted to him above
encounter with death led him towards Evangelicalism. all for his concern for his human development and
This second conversion produced in him what his search for truth which went beyond mere intellectual
memoirs describe as a ‘solemn and beneficial influence activity. I am sure that it was the example of this gifted
in his mind’, and brought him to ‘a closer view of educator that implanted in Newman the vision of a
eternity’.
comprehensive edu cation based on the principle of
mutual exchange between teacher and student.
young Newman
Mayers’ conversion to Evangelicalism coincided
with his appointment as master of Classics at Great
Ealing School (right) in 1814. His incumbency at the
school facilitated frequent conversation with the young
Newman was had been sent there as a boarder in 1808.
Mayers who a gifted teacher who displayed a deep
sense of ‘responsibility attached to the care of pupils,
and watched over their spiritual state with the most
vigilant and affectionate attention.’ Newman’s spoke of
the beneficial effect of Mayers’ pastoral care as:
‘[enabling] me to go through the dangerous season of
my Undergraduate residence here without wounding
my conscience by any gross or scandalous sin [...]
the anxious pains he took to be of service to me, the