The Teacher | Page 6

subject opens, fully before him. He has human nature to deal with, most directly. His whole work is experimenting upon mind; and the mind which is before him to be the subject of his operation, is exactly in the state to be most easily and pleasantly operated upon. The reason now why some teachers find their work delightful, and some find it wearisomeness and tedium itself, is that some do, and some do not take this view of their work. One instructer is like the engine-boy, turning without cessation or change, his everlasting stop-cock, in the same ceaseless, mechanical, and monotonous routine. Another is like the little workman in his brighter moments, fixing his invention and watching with delight its successful and easy accomplishment of his wishes. One is like the officer, driving by vociferations and threats, and demonstrations of violence, the spectators from the galleries. The other, like the shrewd contriver, who converts the very cause which was the whole ground of the difficulty, to a most successful and efficient means of its removal.
These principles show how teaching may, in some cases, be a delightful employment, while in others, its tasteless dulness is interrupted by nothing but its perplexities and cares. The school-room is in reality, a little empire of mind. If the one who presides in it, sees it in its true light; studies the nature and tendency of the minds which he has to control; adapts his plans and his measures to the laws of human nature, and endeavors to accomplish his purposes for them, not by mere labor and force, but by ingenuity and enterprise; he will take pleasure in administering his little government. He will watch, with care and interest, the operation of the moral and intellectual causes which he sets in operation; and find, as he accomplishes his various objects with increasing facility and power, that he will derive a greater and greater pleasure from his work.
Now when a teacher thus looks upon his school as a field in which he is to exercise skill and ingenuity and enterprise; when he studies the laws of human nature, and the character of those minds upon which he has to act; when he explores deliberately the nature of the field which he has to cultivate, and of the objects which he wishes to accomplish; and applies means, judiciously and skilfully adapted to the object; he must necessarily take a strong interest in his work. But when, on the other hand, he goes to his employment, only to perform a certain regular round of daily work, undertaking nothing, and anticipating nothing but this dull and unchangeable routine; and when he looks upon his pupils merely as passive objects of his labors, whom he is to treat with simple indifference while they obey his commands, and to whom he is only to apply reproaches and punishment when they disobey; such a teacher never can take pleasure in the school. Weariness and dulness must reign in both master and scholars, when things, as he imagines, are going right; and mutual anger and crimination, when they go wrong.
Scholars never can be instructed by the power of any dull mechanical routine; nor can they be governed by the blind, naked strength of the master; such means must fail of the accomplishment of the purposes designed, and consequently the teacher who tries such a course must have constantly upon his mind the discouraging, disheartening burden of unsuccessful and almost useless labor. He is continually uneasy, dissatisfied and filled with anxious cares; and sources of vexation and perplexity continually arise. He attempts to remove evils by waging against them a useless and most vexatious warfare of threatening and punishment; and he is trying continually to drive, when he might know that neither the intellect nor the heart are capable of being driven.
I will simply state one case, to illustrate what I mean by the difference between blind force, and active ingenuity and enterprise, in the management of school. I once knew the teacher of a school, who made it his custom to have writing attended to in the afternoon. The boys were accustomed to take their places, at the appointed hour, and each one would stick up his pen in the front of his desk for the teacher to pass around and mend them. The teacher would accordingly pass around, mending the pens from desk to desk, thus enabling the boys, in succession, to begin their task. Of course each boy before he came to his desk was necessarily idle, and, almost necessarily, in mischief. Day after day the teacher went through this regular routine. He sauntered slowly and listlessly through the aisles, and among the benches of the room, wherever he saw the signal of a pen. He paid of course very