The Teacher / Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and Government of the Young

by Jacob Abbott

I do not mean by this that a young man may not make a useful discovery, but only that he may be led away by the ardor of early life to fancy that essential and important which is really not so. It is important that each one should determine whether this is not the case with himself, if his mind is revolving some new plan.

3. Perhaps you are contemplating only a single new institution, which is to depend for its success on yourself and some coadjutors whom you have in mind and whom you well know. If this is the case, consider whether the establishment you are contemplating can be carried on, after you shall have left it, by such men as can ordinarily be obtained. If the plan is founded on some peculiar notions of your own, which would enable you to succeed in it when others, who might also be interested in such a scheme, would probably fail, consider whether there may not be danger that your plan may be imitated by others who can not carry it into successful operation, so that it may be the indirect means of doing injury. A man is, in some degree, responsible for his example and for the consequences which may indirectly flow from his course, as well as for the immediate results which he produces. The Fellenberg school at Hofwyl was perhaps, by its direct results, as successful for a time as any other institution in the world; but there is a great offset to the good which it has thus done to be found in the history of the thousand wretched imitations of it which have been started only to linger a little while and die, and in which a vast amount of time, and talent, and money have been wasted.

4. Consider the influence you may have upon the other institutions of our country, by attaching yourself to some one under the existing organization. If you take an academy or a private school, constituted and organized like other similar institutions, success in your own will give you influence over others. A successful teacher of an academy raises the general standard of academic instruction. A college professor, if he brings extraordinary talents to bear upon the regular duties of that office, throws light, universally, upon the whole science of college discipline and instruction, and thus aids in infusing a continually renewed life and vigor into those venerable seats of learning that might otherwise sink into decrepitude and decay. By going, however, to some new field, establishing some new and fanciful institution, you take yourself from such a sphere; you exert no influence over others, except upon feeble imitators, who fail in their attempts, and bring discredit upon your plans by the awkwardness with which they attempt to adopt them. How much more service, then, to the cause of education will a man of genius render, by falling in with the regularly organized institutions of the country and elevating them, than if in early life he were to devote his powers to some magnificent project of an establishment to which his talents would unquestionably have given temporary success, but which would have taken him away from the community of teachers, and confined the results of his labors to the more immediate effects which his daily duties might produce.

5. Perhaps, however, your plan is not the establishment of some new institution, but the introduction of some new study or pursuit into the one with which you are connected. Before, however, you interrupt the regular arrangements of your school to make such a change, consider carefully what is the real and appropriate object of your institution. Every thing is not to be done in school. The principles of division of labor apply with peculiar force to this employment; so that you must not only consider whether the branch which you are now disposed to introduce is important, but whether it is really such an one as it is on the whole best to include among the objects to be pursued in such an institution. Many teachers seem to imagine that if any thing is in itself important, and especially if it is an important branch of education, the question is settled of its being a proper object of attention in school. But this is very far from being the case. The whole work of education can never be intrusted to the teacher. Much must of course remain in the hands of the parent; it ought so to remain. The object of a school is not to take children out of the parental hands, substituting the watch and guardianship of a stranger for the natural care of father and mother. Far from it. It is only the association of the children for those purposes which can be more successfully accomplished by association. It is a union for few, specific, and limited objects, for the accomplishment of that part (and it is comparatively a small part of the general objects of education) which can be most successfully effected by public institutions and in assemblies of the young.

6. If the branch which you are desiring to introduce appears to you to be an important part of education, and if it seems to you that it can be most successfully attended to in schools, then consider whether the introduction of it, and of all the other branches having equal claims, will or will not give to the common schools too great a complexity. Consider whether it will succeed in the hands of ordinary teachers. Consider whether it will require so much time and effort as will draw off in any considerable degree, the attention of the teacher from the more essential parts of his duty. All will admit that it is highly important that every school should be simple in its plan—as simple as its size and general circumstances will permit, and especially that the public schools in every town and village of our country should never lose sight of what is and must be, after all, their great design—teaching the whole population to ready write, and calculate.

7. If it is a school-book which you are wishing to introduce, consider well before you waste your time in preparing it, and your spirits in the vexatious work of getting it through the press; whether it is, for general use, so superior to those already published as to induce teachers to make a change in favor of yours. I have italicized the words for general use, for no delusion is more common than for a teacher to suppose that because a text-book which he has prepared and uses in manuscript is better for him than any other work which he can obtain, it will therefore be better for general circulation. Every man, if he has any originality of mind, has of course some peculiar method of his own, and he can of course prepare a text-book which will be better adapted to this method than those ordinarily in use. The history of a vast number of text-books, Arithmetics, Geographies, and Grammars, is this: A man of somewhat ingenious mind, adopts some peculiar mode of instruction in one of these branches, and is quite successful, not because the method has any very peculiar excellence, but simply because he takes a greater interest in it, both on account of its novelty and also from the fact that it is his own invention. He conceives the plan of writing a text-book to develop and illustrate this method. He hurries through the work. By some means or other he gets it printed. In due time it is regularly advertised. The journals of education give notice of it; the author sends a few copies to his friends, and that is the end of it. Perhaps a few schools may make a trial of it, and if, for any reason, the teachers who try it are interested in the work, probably in their hands it succeeds. But it does not succeed so well as to attract general attention, and consequently does not get into general circulation. The author loses his time and his patience. The publisher, unless, unfortunately, it was published on the author's account, loses his paper, and in a few months scarcely any body knows that such a book ever saw the light.

It is in this way that the great multitude of school-books which are now constantly issuing from the press take their origin. Far be it from me to discourage the preparation of good school-books. This department of our literature offers a fine field for the efforts of learning and genius. What I contend against is the endless multiplicity of useless works, hastily conceived and carelessly executed, and which serve no purpose but to employ uselessly talents which, if properly applied, might greatly benefit both the community and the possessor.

8. If, however, after mature deliberation, you conclude that you have the plan of a school-book which you ought to try to mature and execute, be slow and cautious about it. Remember that so great is now the competition in this branch, nothing but superior excellence or very extraordinary exertions will secure the favorable reception of a work. Examine all that your predecessors have done before you. Obtain, whatever may be the trouble and expense, all other text-books on the subject, and examine them thoroughly. If you see that you can make a very decided advance on all that has been done, and that the public will probably submit to the inconvenience and expense of a change to secure the result of your labors, go forward slowly and carefully in your work, no matter how much investigation, how much time and labor it may require. The more difficulty you may find in gaining the eminence, the less likely will you be to be followed by successful competitors.

9. Consider, in forming your text-book, not merely the whole subject on which you are to write, but also look extensively and thoroughly at the institutions throughout the country, and consider carefully the character of the teachers by whom you expect it to be used. Sometimes a man publishes a text-book, and when it fails on trial, he says "it is because they did not know how to use it. The book in itself was good. The whole fault was in the awkwardness and ignorance of the teacher." How absurd! As if, to make a good text-book, it was not as necessary to adapt it to teachers as to scholars. A good text-book, which the teachers for whom it was intended did not know how to use!! In other words, a good contrivance, but entirely unfit for the purpose for which it was intended.