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 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 past 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 afterwards acted on a very different principle. He looked over the field and said to himself, what are the objects 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.
"I must make them industrious while they write," was his next thought. After thinking of a variety of methods, he determined to try the following. He required all to begin together at the top of the page and write the same line, in a hand of the same size. They were all required to begin together, he himself beginning at the same time, and writing about as fast as he thought they ought to write, in order to 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 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 do not think the plan I am going to describe a wise one; but I do think 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 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 within the reach of all. He reflected too that the real prize, in such a case, is not the value of the pencil, but the honor of the victory; and as the honor of the victory might as well be coupled with an object of less, as well as with one of greater value, the next week he divided his two pencils into quarters, and offered to his pupils eight prizes instead of two. He offered one to every five scholars, as they sat on their benches, and every boy then saw, that a reward would certainly come within five of him. His chance, accordingly, instead of being one in twenty, became one in five.
Now is it possible for a teacher, after having philosophized upon the nature of the minds upon which he is operating, and surveyed the field, and ingeniously formed a plan, which plan he hopes will, through his own intrinsic power, produce certain effects,—is it possible for him when he comes, for the first day, to witness its operations, to come without feeling a strong interest in the result? It is impossible. After having formed such a plan, and made such arrangements, he will look forward, almost with impatience, to the next writing hour. He wishes to see whether he has estimated the mental capacities and tendencies of his little community aright; and when the time comes, and he surveys the scene, and observes the operation of his measure, and sees many more are reached by it, than were influenced before, he feels a strong gratification; and it is a gratification which is founded upon the noblest principles of our nature. He is tracing on a most interesting field, the operation of cause and effect. From being the mere drudge, who drives, without intellect or thought, a score or two of boys to their daily tasks, he rises to the rank of an intellectual philosopher, exploring the laws and successfully controlling the tendencies of mind.
It will be observed too, that all the time this teacher was performing these experiments, and watching, with intense interest, the results, his pupils were going on undisturbed in their pursuits. The exercises in writing were not interrupted or deranged. This is a point of fundamental importance; for, if what I should say on the subject of exercising ingenuity and contrivance in teaching, should be the means, in any case, of leading a teacher to break in upon the regular duties of his school, and destroy the steady uniformity with which the great objects of such an institution should be pursued, my remarks had better never have been written. There may be variety in methods and plan; but through all this variety, the school, and every individual pupil of it, must go steadily forward in the acquisition of that knowledge which is of greatest importance in the business of future life. In other words, the variations and changes, admitted by the teacher, ought to be mainly confined to the modes of accomplishing those permanent objects to which all the exercises and arrangements of the school ought steadily to aim. More on this subject however in another chapter.
I will mention one other circumstance, which will help to explain the difference in interest and pleasure with which teachers engage in their work. I mean the different views they take of the offences of their pupils. One class of teachers seem never to make it a part of their calculation that their pupils will do wrong, and when any misconduct occurs, they are disconcerted and irritated, and look and act as if some unexpected occurrence had broken in upon their plans. Others understand and consider all this beforehand. They seem to think a little, before they go into their school, what sort of beings boys and girls are, and any ordinary case of youthful delinquency or dulness does not surprise them. I do not mean that they treat such cases with indifference or neglect, but that they expect them, and are prepared for them. Such a teacher knows that boys and girls, are the materials he has to work upon, and he takes care to make himself acquainted with these materials, just as they are. The other class however, do not seem to know at all, what sort of beings they have to deal with, or if they know, do not consider. They expect from them what is not to be obtained, and then are disappointed and vexed at the failure. It is as if a carpenter should attempt to support an entablature by pillars of wood too small and weak for the weight, and then go on, from week to week, suffering anxiety and irritation, as he sees them swelling and splitting under the burden, and finding fault with the wood, instead of taking it to himself.
It is, of course, one essential part of a man's duty in engaging in any undertaking, whether it will lead him to act upon matter or upon mind, to become first well acquainted with the circumstances of the case,—the materials he is to act upon, and the means which he may reasonably expect to have at his command. If he underrates his difficulties, or overrates the power of his means of overcoming them, it is his mistake; a mistake for which he is fully responsible. Whatever may be the nature of the effect which he aims at accomplishing, he ought fully to understand it, and to appreciate justly the difficulties which lie in the way.
Teachers however very often overlook this. A man comes home from his school at night, perplexed and irritated by the petty misconduct which he has witnessed, and been trying to check. He does not however, look forward and try to prevent the occasions of it, adapting his measures to the nature of the material upon which he has to operate; but he stands like the carpenter at his columns, making himself miserable in looking at it, after it occurs, and wondering what to do.