The Teacher | Page 3

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 resolution notes of teacher's
lecture.--Topics.--Plan and illustration of the exercise. --Introduction of
music.--Tabu.--Mental analysis.--Scene in a class.
CHAPTER IX.
THE TEACHER'S FIRST DAY. Embarrassments of young teachers in
first entering upon their duties.--Preliminary information to be acquired
in respect to the school.--Visits to the parents.--Making acquaintance
with the scholars.--Opening the school.--Mode of setting the scholars at

work on the first day.--No sudden changes to be
made.--Misconduct.--Mode of disposing of the cases of it.--Conclusion.

THE TEACHER.
CHAPTER I.
INTEREST IN TEACHING.
A most singular contrariety of opinion prevails 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 the operation of them--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.

[Illustration: Steam Engine]
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 open and shut alternately the cock by which the steam
was now admitted and now shut out from the cylinder. One such boy,
after patiently doing his work for many days, contrived to connect this
stop-cock with some of the moving parts of the engine by a wire, in
such a manner that the engine itself did the work which had been
intrusted to him; and after seeing that the whole business would go
regularly forward, he left the wire in charge, and went away to play.
Such is the story. Now if it is true, how much pleasure the boy must
have experienced in devising and witnessing the successful operation of
his scheme. I do not mean the pleasure of relieving himself from a dull
and wearisome duty; I do not mean the pleasure of anticipated play; but
I mean the strong interest he must have taken in _contriving and
executing his plan_. When, wearied out with his dull, monotonous
work, he first noticed those movements of the machinery which he
thought adapted to his purpose, and the plan flashed into his mind, how
must his eye have brightened, and how quick must the weary
listlessness of his employment have vanished. While he was maturing
his plan and carrying it into execution--while adjusting his wires, fitting
them to the exact length and to the exact position--and especially when,
at last, he began to watch the first successful operation of his
contrivance, he must have enjoyed a pleasure which very few even of
the joyous sports of childhood could have supplied.
It is not, however, exactly the pleasure of exercising _ingenuity in
contrivance_ that I refer to here; for the teacher has not, after all, a
great deal of absolute contriving to do, or, rather, his _principal
business_ is not contriving. The greatest and most permanent source of
pleasure to the boy, in such a case as I have described, is his feeling
that he is accomplishing a great effect by a slight effort of his own; the
feeling of power; acting through the _intervention of instrumentality_,
so as to multiply his power. So great would be this satisfaction, that he
would