Reveries of a Schoolmaster | Page 9

advocates; but, had there been three Americans and two Englishmen, or two Americans and three Englishmen, the function of all would have been clearly judicial. Suffice it to say that this great man made us forget our emotion of subjection, and so made us feel that he would have been a great teacher, just as he was a great statesman. I shall always be grateful for the lesson he taught me and, besides, I am glad that the college chap came in and gave me that psychological massage.
CHAPTER V
BALKING
When I write my book on farm pedagogy I shall certainly make large use of the horse in illustrating the fundamental principles, for he is a noble animal and altogether worthy of the fullest recognition. We often use the expression "horse-sense" somewhat flippantly, but I have often seen a driver who would have been a more useful member of society if he had had as much sense as the horses he was driving. If I were making a catalogue of the "lower animals" I'd certainly include the man who abuses a horse. Why, the celebrated German trick-horse, Hans, had even the psychologists baffled for a long time, but finally he taught them a big chapter in psychology. They finally discovered that his marvellous tricks were accomplished through the power of close observation. Facial expression, twitching of a muscle, movements of the head, these were the things he watched for as his cue in answering questions by indicating the right card. There was a teacher in our school once who wore old-fashioned spectacles. When he wanted us to answer a question in a certain way he unconsciously looked over his spectacles; but when he wanted a different answer he raised his spectacles to his forehead. So we ranked high in our daily grades, but met our Waterloo when the examination came around. That teacher, of course, had never heard of the horse Hans, and so was not aware that in the process of watching his movements we were merely proving that we had horse-sense. He probably attributed our ready answers to the superiority of his teaching, not realizing that our minds were concentrated upon the subject of spectacles.
Of course, a horse balks now and then, and so does a boy. I did a bit of balking myself as a boy, and I am not quite certain that I have even yet become immune. Doctor James Wallace (whose edition of "Anabasis" some of us have read, halting and stumbling along through the parasangs) with three companions went out to Marathon one day from Athens. The distance, as I recall it, is about twenty-two miles, and they left early in the morning, so as to return the same day. Their conveyance was an open wagon with two horses attached. When they had gone a mile or two out of town one of the horses balked and refused to proceed. Then and there each member of the party drew upon his past experiences, seeking a panacea for the equine delinquency. One suggested the plan of building a fire under the recalcitrant horse, while another suggested pouring sand into his ears. Doctor Wallace discouraged these remedies as being cruel and finally told the others to take their places in the wagon and he would try the merits of a plan he had in mind. Accordingly, when they were seated, he clambered over the dash, walked along the wagon-pole, and suddenly plumped himself down upon the horse's back. Then away they went, John Gilpin like, Doctor Wallace's coat-tails and hair streaming out behind.
There was no more balking in the course of the trip, and no one (save, possibly, the horse) had any twinges of conscience to keep him awake that night. The incident is brimful of pedagogy in that it shows that, in order to cure a horse of an attack of balking, you have but to distract his mind from his balking and get him to thinking of something else. Before this occurrence taught me the better way, I was quite prone, in dealing with a balking boy, to hold his mind upon the subject of balking. I told him how unseemly it was, how humiliated his father and mother would be, how he could not grow up to be a useful citizen if he yielded to such tantrums; in short, I ran the gamut of all the pedagogical bromides, and so kept his mind centred upon balking. Now that I have learned better, I strive to divert his mind to something eke, and may ask him to go upon some pleasant errand that he may gain some new experiences. When he returns he has forgotten that he was balking and recounts his experiences most delightfully.
Ed was one of the balkiest boys I ever had in my