The Teacher | Page 3

which is to guide the teacher on this subject. Limits and restrictions to religious influence in school. Religious truths which are generally admitted in this country. The existence of God. Human responsibility. Immortality of the soul. A revelation. Nature of piety. Salvation by Christ. Teacher to do nothing on this subject but what he may do by the common consent of his employers. Reasons for explaining distinctly these limits.
Particular measures proposed. Opening exercises. Prayer. Singing. Direct instruction. Mode of giving it. Example; arrangement of the Epistles in the New Testament. Dialogue. Another example; scene in the woods. Cautions. Affected simplicity of language. Evils of it. Minute details. Example; motives to study. Dialogue. Mingling religious influence with the direct discipline of the school. Fallacious indications of piety. Sincerity of the Teacher. 152
CHAPTER VI.
--MT. VERNON SCHOOL.
Reason for inserting the description. Advantage of visiting schools; and of reading descriptions of them. Addressed to a new scholar.
1. Her personal duty. Study card. Rule. But one rule. Cases when this rule may be waived. 1. At the direction of teachers. 2. On extraordinary emergencies. Reasons for the rule. Anecdote. Punishments. Incident described. Confession.
2. Order of Daily Exercises. Opening of the school. Schedules. Hours of study and recess. General Exercises. Business. Examples. Sections.
3. Instruction and supervision of pupils. Classes. Organization. Sections. Duties of superintendents.
4. Officers. Design in appointing them. Their names and duties. Example of the operation of the system.
5. The Court. Its plan and design. A trial described.
6. Religious Instruction. Principles inculcated. Measures. Religious exercises in school. Meeting on Saturday afternoon. Concluding remarks. 181
CHAPTER VII.
--SCHEMING.
Time lost upon fruitless schemes. Proper province of ingenuity and enterprise. Cautions. Case supposed. The spelling class; an experiment with it; its success and its consequences. System of literary institutions in this country. Directions to a young teacher on the subject of forming new plans. New institutions; new school books. Ingenuity and enterprise very useful, within proper limits. Ways of making known new plans. Periodicals. Family newspapers. Teacher's meetings.
Rights of Committees, Trustees, or Patrons, in the control of the school. Principle which ought to govern. Case supposed. Extent to which the teacher is bound by the wishes of his employers. 221
CHAPTER VIII.
--REPORTS OF CASES.
Plan of the Chapter. Hats and Bonnets. Injury to clothes. Mistakes which are not censurable. Tardiness; plan for punishing it. Helen's lesson. Firmness in measures united with mildness of manner. Insincere confession: scene in a class. Court. Trial of a case. Teacher's personal character. The way to elevate the character of the employment. Six hours only to be devoted to school. The Chestnut Burr. Scene in the wood. Dialogue in school. An experiment. Series of Lessons in writing. The correspondence. Two kinds of management. Plan of weekly reports. The shopping exercise. Example. Artifices in Recitations. Keeping Resolutions; notes of Teacher's Lecture. Topics. Plan and illustration of the exercise. Introduction of music. Tabu. Mental Analysis. Scene in a class. 242

THE TEACHER.
CHAPTER I.
INTEREST IN TEACHING.
There is a most singular contrariety of opinion prevailing in the community, in regard to the pleasantness of the business of teaching. Some teachers go to their daily task, merely upon compulsion: they regard it as intolerable drudgery. Others love the work: they hover around the school-room as long as they can, and never cease to think, and seldom to talk, of their delightful labors.
Unfortunately there are too many of the former class, and the first object, which, in this work, I shall attempt to accomplish, is to show my readers, especially those who have been accustomed to look upon the business of teaching as a weary and heartless toil, how it happens, that it is, in any case, so pleasant. The human mind is always, essentially, the same. That which is tedious and joyless to one, will be so to another, if pursued in the same way, and under the same circumstances. And teaching, if it is pleasant, animating, and exciting to one, may be so to all.
I am met, however, at the outset, in my effort to show why it is that teaching is ever a pleasant work, by the want of a name for a certain faculty or capacity of the human mind, through which most of the enjoyment of teaching finds its avenue. Every mind is so constituted as to take a positive pleasure in the exercise of ingenuity in adapting means to an end, and in watching their operation;--in accomplishing by the intervention of instruments, what we could not accomplish without;--in devising, (when we see an object to be effected, which is too great for our direct and immediate power) and setting at work, some instrumentality, which may be sufficient to accomplish it.
It is said, that, when the steam engine was first put into operation, such was the imperfection of the machinery, that a boy was necessarily stationed at it, to