MARION'S PLAN.
ISS WILBUR! Miss Wilbur! can't we go in Miss Lily's class to-day, our teacher isn't here?"
"Miss Wilbur, they are crowding us off the seat; there isn't room for no more in this class."
"Miss Wilbur, sister Nellie can't come to-day; she has the toothache. Can I go in Kitty's class?"
Every one of these little voices spoke at once; two of the owners thereof twitched at her dress, and another of them nudged her elbow. In the midst of this little babel of confusion the door opened softly, and Dr. Dennis came in. Marion turned toward him and laughed—a perplexed laugh that might mean something besides amusement.
"What is it?" he asked, answering the look instead of the laugh.
"It is everything," she said, quickly. "You mustn't stay a minute, Dr. Dennis; we are not in company trim to-day at all. Unless you will do the work, we can't have you."
"I came to hear, not to work," he said, smiling, and at the same time looking troubled.
"You will hear very little that will interest you for the next ten minutes at least; though I don't know but you would better stay; it would be a good introduction to the talk that I want to have with you early in the week. I am coming to-morrow after school, if I may."
Dr. Dennis gave the assent promptly, named the hour that he would be at leisure, and went away wondering what they were accomplishing in the primary class.
This was the introduction to Marion's talk in the study with Dr. Dennis. She wasted no time in preliminaries, but had hardly seated herself before the subject on her mind was brought forward.
"It is all about that class, Dr. Dennis. I am going to prove a failure."
"Don't," he said, smiling at her words, but looking his disturbance; "we have had failures enough in that class to shipwreck it; it is quite time we had a change for the better. What is the trouble?"
"The trouble is, we do nothing. Two-thirds of our time is occupied in getting ready to do; and even then we can't half accomplish it. Then we don't stay ready, and have to begin the work all over again. Yesterday, for instance, there were three absences among the teachers; that means confusion, for each of those teachers have seven children who are thus thrown loose on the world. Think how much time we must consume in getting them seated somewhere, and under some one's care; and then imagine, if you can, the amount of time that they consume in saying, 'Our teacher doesn't do so, she does so.'"
"What is the reason that the teachers in that room are so very irregular?"
"Why, they are not irregular; that is as Sunday-school teachers rate regularity. To be sure, it would never do to be teaching a graded school, for instance, and be as careless as some of them are about regularity. But that is a different matter, of course; this is only a Sunday-school! But for all that, I think they do as well as the average. You see, Dr. Dennis, there are twenty of them, and if each one of them is present every Sunday in the year save three, that makes a good deal of regularity on their part, and yet averages absences every Sabbath to be looked after. Don't you see?"
"I see," he said, smiling; "that is a mathematical way of putting it. There is reason in it, too. How in the world do you manage when there are vacancies?"
"Which is always," Marion said, quickly. "There has not been a Sabbath since I have had charge when all the teachers were present; and I have taken pains to inquire of the former superintendent, who reports very much the same. Isn't it so in all schools, Dr. Dennis?"
"Of course there must of necessity be some detentions; but not so many, probably, as there actually are, if we were in the habit of being very conscientious about these matters; still, I don't know that we are worse than others. But you haven't told me how you manage?"
"I manage every way; there is no set way to do it. I stand around in much the same state of perplexity in which you found me yesterday. The children each have their special friends who have been put in other classes, and they are on the qui vive to be with them, which adds not a little to the general confusion. Sometimes we have a regular whirl about of seats, enlarge two or three classes, and crowd some seats most uncomfortably, leaving others empty; sometimes we go out to the Bible-classes for volunteers—and, by the way, it is nearly impossible to find any. I wish you would preach a sermon on that subject. It is so easy to say, 'Oh, please excuse me;' it requires so little courage to do it; and is such a comfortable and unanswerable way of disposing of the whole matter. At the same time there is some degree of excuse for the refusals. Think of the folly of setting a young girl who knows nothing about little children, and has made no preparation to teach them, beside half a dozen little restless mortals, and bidding her interest them in the lesson for ten minutes. She doesn't know how to interest them, and she knows she doesn't, and the fact embarrasses her. Before she has fairly found out what she is expected to do her time is gone; for it takes a wonderful amount of time to get ready to work."
"But these young girls have only to teach certain Scripture verses, and a prayer or a hymn, or something of that sort have they not? One would think they might be equal to that without preparation."
"Do you think so?" Marion asked, a gleam of fun in her keen eyes. "I should like to see you try it, provided you have no better mental caliber to assist you than some of the volunteers have. Why, there is a right and wrong way of teaching even a Bible verse. Do you know, sir, that you may repeat over words to children like a list from a spelling lesson, and they will get no more idea from it than if it were a French sentence, and will be able to commit it about as readily? If I had children, I should rebel at their being taught even Bible verses by novices. Why, it isn't allowed in public schools. The days have gone by when anybody is supposed to be smart enough to teach children to drawl through the alphabet. We have the best of trained teachers even for that work, why should the Sunday-school not need them even more, infinitely more?
"Now that reminds me of a difficulty which is present even when the teachers are all there. They are not the right sort of teachers, many of them; they do just such work as would not be tolerated on week-days by any board of trustees; they whisper to each other; sometimes about the music which they are practicing, sometimes about the party that is to come off to-morrow. These are the exceptions, I know; but there are such exceptions in our school, and human nature is much the same the world over. I presume they are everywhere; at any rate, we have to deal just now with our school, and I know they are there.
"Dr. Dennis, there are at least seven of those twenty teachers in my room who ought to be in good, solid, earnest working Bible classes, getting faith for help every Sunday; getting ideas that shall make them of use in the world, instead of frittering their time away on what at best, seems to them but a very mechanical work, teaching some little children to repeat the Twenty-third Psalm, or to say the Lord's Prayer. The very fact that they do not recognize the dignity of such work unfits them for it; and the fact that they have no lesson to teach, I mean no lesson which they have to prepare carefully, excuses them from any attempt at Bible study."
"I believe you would make an excellent lecturer, if you were to take the field on a subject that interested you." This was Dr. Dennis' most irrelevant answer to Marion's eager words. She was not to be thrown off her theme.
"Then I shall try it, perhaps, on this very subject, for it certainly interests me wonderfully. Indeed, I am practicing now, with you for my audience."
"Don't think I am not interested, for I am," he said, returning to gravity and anxiety on the instant. "I see the subject to be full of perplexities; the class has seemed a bewildering one; the idea of putting the babies away alone in their own room fitted up for the purpose, and feeding them with milk until they are old enough to bear strong meat, has been something of a hobby with me. I like it theoretically, but I confess to you that I have never been able to enjoy its practical workings in our school."
"I don't wonder," Marion said, with energy. "It works most distressingly. I am coming to the very pith of my lecture now, which is this: I have been teaching school for more than seven years. I have taught all sorts and sizes of pupils. I had a fancy that I could manage almost anything in that line, believing that I had been through experiences varied enough to serve me in whatever line I could need, but I have found myself mistaken; I have found a work now that I can't accomplish. Mind you, I don't say that no one can do it; I am not quite so egotistic as that. If I do lecture, I have only to say that my teaching in that room is a failure, I can't do it, and I mean to give it up."
"Don't," Dr. Dennis said, nervously. "You will be the third one in a year's time."
"I don't wonder. I wonder that they are alive."
"But, Miss Wilbur, you are a dark and gloomy lecturer. When you demolish air castles, have you nothing to build up in their places? Would you send the babies back into the main room again, to be worn out with quiet and lack of motion?"
"Not a bit of it. I like the baby-room plan as well as any mortal; and I have a remedy which it seems to me would arrange the whole thing. Of course it seems so to me; we always like our own ways. The truth is, Dr. Dennis, I like nurseries, and think they ought to be maintained; but I don't like the idea of too many mothers there."
"Just what, in plain English, would you do, my friend, if you were commander-in-chief of the whole matter, and all we had to do was to obey you?"
"It isn't at all modest to tell," Marion said, laughing, "but it is true. I would banish every one of those twenty teachers, and reign alone in my glory. No I wouldn't either. I would pick out the very best one among them, and train her for an assistant."
"And manage the whole number yourself!"
"Why not? There are only a hundred of them, and I have managed that number for six hours a day, five days in a week, without difficulty."
"Well, now, let me see just what you think you gain."
"It would take too long to tell. In my own opinion, I gain almost everything. But, in the first place, let me suppose a case. We have one good teacher, we will say, in that class, who knows just what she is about, and comes prepared to be about it. She has, say, two assistants, each carefully trained to a certain work; each understanding that in the event of the detention of the leader one of them will be called on to teach the class, each pledging herself to notify the other of necessary absences. Don't you see that it will rarely, if ever, happen that one of the three cannot be at her post? The very sense of importance and responsibility attached to their office will lessen the chance of absence, while one teacher in twenty is almost sure to be away. Then we have those young girls in their places in the Bible class learning to be teachers indeed."
"But, Miss Wilbur, would not such a work be very hard for the leader?"
"Why harder than the present system in our school? I think, mind you, that it wouldn't be nearly so hard. But, for the sake of the argument, I will say, Why any harder? Why cannot her one assistant relieve her in just the same way that the other twenty are supposed to do now? Is there any known reason why a hundred children cannot repeat the Lord's Prayer together as well as have a lesson taught them together? Children like it, I assure you; there is an enthusiasm in numbers; they would much rather speak aloud and in beautiful unison, as they can be trained to do, than to speak so low that the recitation loses half its beauty, because they must not disturb others.
"Then, I don't know how it is with other teachers, but, theoretically, you may plan out the work of these young teachers as much as you please, and, practically, they will do very much as they please; and it is a great deal harder for me to sit listening to a sort of teaching that I don't like, and know that I am obliged to be still and endure it, than it is to do it myself.
"The idea that one hour of work on the Sabbath is so fearfully wearing, is in my humble opinion all nonsense; those who think so, have never been teachers of graded schools six hours a day, five days in the week, I don't believe. However, that is my opinion, you know. I may be quite mistaken as to theory; but I know as much as this. I am sure I could do the teaching alone, and I am sure that I can't do it with twenty helpers, so I just want to give it up."
"Don't give up the subject yet, please; I am interested. There is an argument on the other side that is very strong, I think. You haven't touched upon it. I have heard a good deal said, and thought it a point well taken, about the personal influence of each teacher. A sense of ownership that teachers of large classes can hardly call out because of their inability to visit their scholars, and to be intimate with their little plans, and with their home life."
Marion did a very rude thing at this point—she sat back in her rocking-chair and laughed. Then she said:
"We are dealing, you remember, with our school. Now, you know the young ladies in that class. What proportion of them, should you imagine, without knowing anything about the facts, do really visit their pupils during the week and keep themselves posted as to the family life of any of them?"
A faint attempt at a smile hovered over Dr. Dennis' face as he said:
"Not many I am afraid. Indeed, to be very truthful, I don't believe there are five."
"I know there are not," Marion said, decidedly. "And my supposition is that our school will average as well as others. There are exceptions, of course, but we are talking about the average. Now, that item sounds real well in a lecture, or on paper, but when you come to the practical part they simply don't do it. Some of them know no more how to do it than kittens would, or than Ruth Erskine knows how to call on the second stratum of society in her own church."
Whereupon both pastor and visitor laughed. Dr. Dennis had heard of Ruth's attempt in that line.
"We have to deal with very common-place human beings, instead of with angels. I think that is the trouble," Marion said, returning to the charge. "We can make nice rules, and they look well and sound beautifully; then if we can carry them out they are delightful, no doubt. But if we can't, why, what are we going to do about it? If the ladies in question were salaried teachers in the day-school, a board of trustees could come together and dismiss them if they did not obey the laws. Who thinks of such a thing in the Sunday-school? It is like calling all these teachers together for a teachers' meeting. You can call them to your heart's content; I know you can, for I have tried it; and if there is not a concert, or a tea-party, or a lecture, or a toothache on the evening in question some of them will come, and the others won't."
