The Teacher | Page 7

secure the highest improvement. When he had finished his line, he ascertained how many had preceded him and how many were behind. He requested the first to write slower, and the others faster; and by this means, after a few trials, he secured uniform, regular, systematic, and industrious employment throughout the school. Probably there were, at first, difficulties in the operation of the plan, which he had to devise ways and means to surmount; but what I mean to present particularly to the reader is, that he was interested in his experiments. While sitting in his desk, giving his command to begin line after line, and noticing the unbroken silence, and attention, and interest which prevailed (for each boy was interested to see how nearly with the master he could finish his work), while presiding over such a scene he must have been interested. He must have been pleased with the exercise of his almost military command, and to witness how effectually order and industry, and excited and pleased attention, had taken the place of listless idleness and mutual dissatisfaction.
After a few days, he appointed one of the older and more judicious scholars to give the word for beginning and ending the lines, and he sat surveying the scene, or walking from desk to desk, noticing faults, and considering what plans he could form for securing more and more fully the end he had in view. He found that the great object of interest and attention among the boys was to come out right, and that less pains were taken with the formation of the letters than there ought to be to secure the most rapid improvement.
But how shall he secure greater pains? By stern commands and threats? By going from desk to desk, scolding one, rapping the knuckles of another, and holding up to ridicule a third, making examples of such individuals as may chance to attract his special attention? No; he has learned that he is operating upon a little empire of mind, and that he is not to endeavor to drive them as a man drives a herd, by mere peremptory command or half angry blows. He must study the nature of the effect that he is to produce, and of the materials upon which he is to work, and adopt, after mature deliberation, a plan to accomplish his purpose founded upon the principles which ought always to regulate the action of mind upon mind, and adapted to produce the intellectual effect which he wishes to accomplish.
In the case supposed, the teacher concluded to appeal to emulation. While I describe the measure he adopted, let it be remembered that I am now only approving of the resort to ingenuity and invention, and the employment of moral and intellectual means for the accomplishment of his purposes, and not of the measures themselves. I am not sure the plan I am going to describe is a wise one; but I am sure that the teacher, while trying it, must _have been interested in his intellectual experiment._ His business, while pursued in such a way, could not have been a mere dull and uninteresting routine.
He purchased, for three cents apiece, two long lead pencils--an article of great value in the opinion of the boys of country schools--and he offered them, as prizes, to the boy who would write most carefully; not to the one who should write best, but to the one whose book should exhibit most appearance of effort and care for a week. After announcing his plan, he watched with strong interest its operation. He walked round the room while the writing was in progress, to observe the effect of his measure. He did not reprove those who were writing carelessly; he simply noticed who and how many they were. He did not commend those who were evidently making effort; he noticed who and how many they were, that he might understand how far, and upon what sort of minds, his experiment was successful, and where it failed. He was taking a lesson in human nature--human nature as it exhibits itself in boys--and was preparing to operate more and more powerfully by future plans.
The lesson which he learned by the experiment was this, that one or two prizes will not influence the majority of a large school. A few of the boys seemed to think that the pencils were possibly within their reach, and they made vigorous efforts to secure them; but the rest wrote on as before. Thinking it certain that they should be surpassed by the others, they gave up the contest at once in despair.
The obvious remedy was to multiply his prizes, so as to bring one of them within the reach of all. He reflected, too, that the real prize, in such a case,