The Teacher | Page 6

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 skillfully 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 toil, 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 do wrong, such a teacher
never can take pleasure in the school. Weariness and dullness must
reign in both master and scholars when things, as he imagines, are
going right, and mutual anger and crimination when they go wrong.
[Illustration: School Master]
Scholars never can be successfully instructed by the power of any dull
mechanical routine, nor can they be properly 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 school
was in the country, and it was the old times when quills, instead of steel
pens, were universally used. The boys were accustomed to take their
places at the appointed hour, and each one would set up his pen in the

front of his desk for the teacher to come and mend them. The teacher
would accordingly pass around the school-room, mending the pens,
from desk to desk, thus enabling the boys, in succession, to begin their
task. Of course, each boy, before the teacher 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 little
attention to the writing, now and then reproving, with an impatient tone,
some extraordinary instance of carelessness, or leaving his work to
suppress some rising disorder. Ordinarily, however, he seemed to be
lost in vacancy of thought, dreaming, perhaps, of other scenes, or
inwardly repining at the eternal monotony and tedium of a teacher's life.
His boys took no interest in their work, and of course made no progress.
They were sometimes unnecessarily idle, and sometimes mischievous,
but never usefully or pleasantly employed, for the whole hour was
passed before the pens could all be brought down. Wasted time, blotted
books, and fretted tempers were all the results which the system
produced.
The same teacher afterward acted on a very different principle. He
looked over the field, and said to himself, "What are the objects which I
wish to accomplish in this writing exercise, and how can I best
accomplish them? I wish to obtain the greatest possible amount of
industrious and careful practice in writing. The first thing evidently is
to save the wasted time." He accordingly made preparation for mending
the pens at a previous hour, so that all should be ready, at the appointed
time, to commence the work together. This could be done quite as
conveniently when the boys were engaged in studying, by requesting
them to put out their pens at an appointed and previous time. He sat at
his table, and the pens of a whole bench were brought to him, and, after
being carefully mended, were returned, to be in readiness for the
writing hour. Thus the first difficulty, the loss of time, was obviated.
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