The Teacher | Page 2

trouble from this source.--Degree of importance to be attached to good pens.--Plan for providing them. 3. Answering questions.--Evils.--Each pupil's fair proportion of time.--Questions about lessons.--When the teacher should refuse to answer them.--Rendering assistance.--When to be refused. 4. Hearing recitations.--Regular arrangement of them.--Punctuality.--Plan and schedule.--General exercises.--Subjects to be attended to at them.
General arrangements of government.--Power to be delegated to pupils.--Gardiner Lyceum.--Its government.--The trial.--Real republican government impracticable in schools.--Delegated power.--Experiment with the writing-books.--Quarrel about the nail.--Offices for pupils.--Cautions.--Danger of insubordination.--New plans to be introduced gradually.
CHAPTER III.
INSTRUCTION. The three important branches.--The objects which are really most important.--Advanced scholars.--Examination of school and scholars at the outset.--Acting on numbers.--Extent to which it may be carried.--Recitation and Instruction.
1. Recitation.--Its object.--Importance of a thorough examination of the class.--Various modes.--Perfect regularity and order necessary. --Example.--Story of the pencils.--Time wasted by too minute an attention to individuals.--Example.--Answers given simultaneously to save time.--Excuses.--Dangers in simultaneous recitation.--Means of avoiding them.--Advantages of this mode.--Examples.--Written answers. 2. Instruction.--Means of exciting interest.--Variety.--Examples.--Showing the connection between the studies of school and the business of life.--Example from the controversy between general and state governments.--Mode of illustrating it.--Proper way of meeting difficulties.--Leading pupils to surmount them.--True way to encourage the young to meet difficulties.--The boy and the wheel-barrow.--Difficult examples in arithmetic.
Proper way of rendering assistance.--(1.) Simply analyzing intricate subjects.--Dialogue on longitude.--(2.) Making previous truths perfectly familiar.--Experiment with the multiplication table.--Latin Grammar lesson.--Geometry.
3. General cautions.--Doing work for the scholar.--Dullness.--Interest in all the pupils.--Making all alike.--Faults of pupils.--The teacher's own mental habits.--False pretensions.
CHAPTER IV.
MORAL DISCIPLINE. First impressions.--Story.--Danger of devoting too much attention to individual instances.--The profane boy.--Case described.--Confession of the boys.--Success.--The untidy desk.--Measures in consequence. --Interesting the scholars in the good order of the school.--Securing a majority.--Example.--Reports about the desks.--The new College building.--Modes of interesting the boys.--The irregular class.--Two ways of remedying the evil.--Boys' love of system and regularity. --Object of securing a majority, and particular means of doing it.--Making school pleasant.--Discipline should generally be private.--In all cases that are brought before the school, public opinion in the teacher's favor should be secured.--Story of the rescue.--Feelings of displeasure against what is wrong.--The teacher under moral obligation, and governed, himself, by law.--Description of the Moral Exercise.--Prejudice.--The scholars' written remarks, and the teacher's comments.--The spider.--List of subjects.--Anonymous writing.--Specimens.--Marks of a bad scholar.--Consequences of being behindhand.--New scholars.--A satirical spirit.--Variety.
Treatment of individual offenders.--Ascertaining who they are.--Studying their characters.--Securing their personal attachment.--Asking assistance.--The whistle.--Open, frank dealing.--Example.--Dialogue with James.--Communications in writing.
CHAPTER V.
RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE. The American mechanic at Paris.--A Congregational teacher among Quakers.--Parents have the ultimate right to decide how their children shall be educated.
Agreement in religious opinion in this country.--Principle 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.
CHAPTER VI.
MOUNT VERNON SCHOOL. Reason for inserting the description.--Advantage of visiting schools, and of reading descriptions of them.--Addressed to a new scholar.--Her personal duty.--Study-card.--Rule.--But one rule.--Cases when this rule maybe waived.--1. At the direction of teachers.--2. On extraordinary emergencies.--Reasons for the rule.--Anecdote.--Punishments.--Incidents 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.
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 schoolbooks.--Ingenuity and enterprise very useful, within proper limits.--Ways of making known new plans.--Periodicals.--Family newspapers.--Teachers' 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.
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 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