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

by Jacob Abbott

1. It will be well for the young teacher to take opportunity, between the time of his engaging his school and that of his commencing it, to acquire as much information in respect to it beforehand as possible, so as to be somewhat acquainted with the scene of his labors before entering upon it. Ascertain the names and the characters of the principal families in the district, their ideas and wishes in respect to the government of the school, the kind of management adopted by one or two of the last teachers, the difficulties they fell into, the nature of the complaints made against them, if any, and the families with whom difficulty has usually arisen. This information must, of course, be obtained in private conversation; a good deal of it must be, from its very nature, highly confidential; but it is very important that the teacher should be possessed of it. He will necessarily become possessed of it by degrees in the course of his administration, when, however, it may be too late to be of any service to him. But, by judicious and proper efforts to acquire it beforehand, he will enter upon the discharge of his duties with great advantage. It is like a navigator's becoming acquainted beforehand with the nature and the dangers of the sea over which he is about to sail.

Such inquiries as these will, in ordinary cases, bring to the teacher's knowledge, in most districts in our country, some cases of peculiarly troublesome scholars, or unreasonable and complaining parents; and stories of their unjustifiable conduct on former occasions will come to him exaggerated by the jealousy of rival neighbors. There is danger that his resentment may be roused a little, and that his mind will assume a hostile attitude at once toward such individuals, so that he will enter upon his work rather with a desire to seek a collision with them, or, at least, with secret feelings of defiance toward them—feelings which will lead to that kind of unbending perpendicularity in his demeanor toward them which will almost inevitably lead to a collision. Now this is wrong. There is, indeed, a point where firm resistance to unreasonable demands becomes a duty; but, as a general principle, it is most unquestionably true that it is the teacher's duty to accommodate himself to the character and expectations of his employers, not to face and brave them. Those italicized words may be understood to mean something which would be entirely wrong; but in the sense in which I mean to use them there can be no question that they indicate the proper path for one employed by others to do work for them in all cases to pursue. If, therefore, the teacher finds by his inquiries into the state of his district that there are some peculiar difficulties and dangers there, let him not cherish a disposition to face and resist them, but to avoid them. Let him go with an intention to soothe rather than to irritate feelings which have been wounded before, to comply with the wishes of all so far as he can, even if they are not entirely reasonable, and, while he endeavors to elevate the standard and correct the opinions prevailing among his employers by any means in his power, to aim at doing it gently, and in a tone and manner suitable to the relation he sustains—in a word, let him skillfully avoid the dangers of his navigation, not obstinately run his ship against a rock on purpose on the ground that the rock has no business to be there.

This is the spirit, then, with which these preliminary inquiries in regard to the patrons of the school ought to be made. We come now to a second point.

2. It will assist the young teacher very much in his first day's labors if he takes measures for seeing and conversing with some of the older or more intelligent scholars on the day or evening before he begins his school, with a view of obtaining from them some acquaintance with the internal arrangements and customs of the school. The object of this is to obtain the same kind of information with respect to the interior of the school that was recommended in respect to the district under the former head. He may call upon a few families, especially those which furnish a large number of scholars for the school, and make as many minute inquiries of them as he can respecting all the interior arrangements to which they have been accustomed, what reading-books and other text-books have been used, what are the principal classes in all the several departments of instruction, and what is the system of discipline, and of rewards and punishments, to which the school has been accustomed.

If, in such conversations, the teacher should find a few intelligent and communicative scholars, he might learn a great deal about the past habits and condition of the school, which would be of great service to him. Not, by any means, that he will adopt and continue these methods as a matter of course, but only that a knowledge of them will render him very important aid in marking out his own course. The more minute and full the information of this sort is which he thus obtains, the better. If practicable, it would be well to make out a catalogue of all the principal classes, with the names of those individuals belonging to them who will probably attend the new school, and the order in which they were usually called upon to read or recite. The conversation which would be necessary to accomplish this would of itself be of great service. It would bring the teacher into an acquaintance with several important families and groups of children under the most favorable circumstances. The parents would see and be pleased with the kind of interest they would see the teacher taking in his new duties. The children would be pleased to be able to render their new instructor some service, and would go to the school-room on the next morning with a feeling of acquaintance with him, and a predisposition to be pleased. And if by chance any family should be thus called upon that had heretofore been captious or complaining, or disposed to be jealous of the higher importance or influence of other families, that spirit would be entirely softened and subdued by such an interview with their new instructor at their own fireside on the evening preceding the commencement of his labors. The great object, however, which the teacher would have in view in such inquiries should be the value of the information itself. As to the use which he will make of it, we shall speak hereafter.

3. It is desirable that the young teacher should meet his scholars first in an unofficial capacity. For this purpose, repair to the school-room on the first day at an early hour, so as to see and become acquainted with the scholars as they come in one by one. The intercourse between teacher and pupil should be like that between parents and children, where the utmost freedom is united with the most perfect respect. The father who is most firm and decisive in his family government can mingle most freely in the conversation and sports of his children without any derogation of his authority, or diminution of the respect they owe. Young teachers, however, are prone to forget this, and to imagine that they must assume an appearance of stern authority always, when in the presence of their scholars, if they wish to be respected or obeyed. This they call keeping up their dignity. Accordingly, they wait, on the morning of their induction into office, until their new subjects are all assembled, and then walk in with an air of the highest dignity, and with the step of a king; and sometimes a formidable instrument of discipline is carried in the hand to heighten the impression. Now there is no question that it is of great importance that scholars should have a high idea of the teacher's firmness and inflexible decision in maintaining his authority and repressing all disorder of every kind, but this impression should be created by their seeing how he acts in the various emergencies which will spontaneously occur, and not by assuming airs of importance or dignity, feigned for effect. In other words, their respect for him should be based on real traits of character as they see them brought out into natural action, and not on appearances assumed for the occasion.

It seems to me, therefore, that it is best for the teacher first to meet his scholars with the air and tone of free and familiar intercourse, and he will find his opportunity more favorable for doing this if he goes early on the first morning of his labors, and converses freely with those whom he finds there, and with others as they come in. He may take an interest with them in all the little arrangements connected with the opening of the school—the building of the fire, the paths through the snow, the arrangements of seats; calling upon them for information or aid, asking their names, and, in a word, entering fully and freely into conversation with them, just as a parent, under similar circumstances, would do with his children. All the children thus addressed will be pleased with the gentleness and affability of the teacher. Even a rough and ill-natured boy, who has perhaps come to the school with the express determination of attempting to make mischief, will be completely disarmed by being asked politely to help the teacher arrange the fire, or alter the position of his desk. Thus, by means of the half hour during which the scholars are coming together, and of the visits made in the preceding evening, as described under the last head, the teacher will find, when he calls upon the children to take their seats, that he has made a very large number of them his personal friends. Many of these will have communicated their first impressions to the others, so that he will find himself possessed, at the outset, of that which is of vital consequence in the opening of any administration—a strong party in his favor.

4. The time for calling the school to order and commencing exercises of some sort will at length arrive, though if the work of making personal acquaintances is going on prosperously, it may perhaps be delayed a little beyond the usual hour. When, however, the time arrives, we would strongly recommend that the first service by which the regular duties of the school are commenced should be an act of religious worship. There are many reasons why the exercises of the school should every day be thus commenced, and there are special reasons for it on the first day.

There are very few districts where parents would have any objection to this. They might, indeed, in some cases, if the subject were to be brought up formally before them as a matter of doubt, anticipate some difficulties, or create imaginary ones, growing out of the supposed sensitiveness of contending sects; but if the teacher were, of his own accord, to commence the plain, faithful, and honest discharge of this duty as a matter of course, very few would think of making any objection to it, and almost all would be satisfied and pleased with its actual operation. If, however, the teacher should, in any case, have reason to believe that such a practice would be contrary to the wishes of his employers, it would, according to views we have presented in another chapter, be wrong for him to attempt to introduce it. He might, if he should see fit, make such an objection a reason for declining to take the school; but he ought not, if he takes it, to act counter to the known wishes of his employers in so important a point. But if, on the other hand, no such objections are made known to him, he need not raise the question himself at all, but take it for granted that in a Christian land there will be no objection to imploring the Divine protection and blessing at the opening of a daily school.

If this practice is adopted, it will have a most powerful influence upon the moral condition of the school. It must be so. Though many will be inattentive, and many utterly unconcerned, yet it is not possible to bring children, even in form, into the presence of God every day, and to utter in their hearing the petitions which they ought to present, without bringing a powerful element of moral influence to bear upon their hearts. The good will be made better; the conscientious more conscientious still; and the rude and savage will be subdued and softened by the daily attempt to lead them to the throne of their Creator. To secure this effect, the devotional service must be an honest one. There must be nothing feigned or hypocritical; no hackneyed phrases used without meaning, or intonations of assumed solemnity. It must be honest, heartfelt, simple prayer; the plain and direct expression of such sentiments as children ought to feel, and of such petitions as they ought to offer. We shall speak presently of the mode of avoiding some abuses to which this exercise is liable; but if these sources of abuse are avoided, and the duty is performed in that plain, simple, direct, and honest manner in which it certainly will be if it springs from the heart, it must have a great influence on the moral progress of the children, and, in fact, in all respects on the prosperity of the school.