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

by Jacob Abbott

A class should go on slowly, and dwell on details so long as to fix firmly and make perfectly familiar whatever they undertake to learn. In this manner the knowledge they acquire will become their own. It will be incorporated, as it were, into their very minds, and they can not afterward be deprived of it.

The exercises which have for their object this rendering familiar what has been learned may be so varied as to interest the pupil very much, instead of being tiresome, as it might at first be supposed.

Suppose, for instance, a teacher has explained to a large class in grammar the difference between an adjective and an adverb; if he leave it here, in a fortnight one half of the pupils would have forgotten the distinction, but by dwelling upon it a few lessons he may fix it forever. The first lesson might be to require the pupils to write twenty short sentences containing only adjectives. The second to write twenty containing only adverbs. The third to write sentences in two forms, one containing the adjective, and the other expressing the same idea by means of the adverb, arranging them in two columns, thus:

He writes well. | His writing is good.

Again, they may make out a list of adjectives, with the adverbs derived from each in another column. Then they may classify adverbs on the principle of their meaning, or according to their termination. The exercise may be infinitely varied, and yet the object of the whole may be to make perfectly familiar, and to fix forever in the mind the distinction explained.

These two points seem to me to be fundamental, so far as assisting pupils through the difficulties which lie in their way is concerned. Diminish the difficulties as far as is necessary by shortening and simplifying the steps, and make thorough work as you go on. These principles, carried steadily into practice, will be effectual in leading any mind through any difficulties which may occur. And though they can not, perhaps, be fully applied to every mind in a large school, yet they can be so far acted upon in reference to the whole mass as to accomplish the object for a very large majority.

3. General cautions. A few miscellaneous suggestions, which we shall include under this head, will conclude this chapter.

(1.) Never do any thing for a scholar, but teach him to do it for himself. How many cases occur in the schools of our country where the boy brings his slate to the teacher, saying he can not do a certain sum. The teacher takes the slate and pencil, performs the work in silence, brings the result, and returns the slate to the hands of his pupil, who walks off to his seat, and goes to work on the next example, perfectly satisfied with the manner in which he is passing on. A man who has not done this a hundred times himself will hardly believe it possible that such a practice can prevail, it is so evidently a mere waste of time both for master and scholar.

(2.) Never get out of patience with dullness. Perhaps I ought to say, never get out of patience with any thing. That would, perhaps, be the wisest rule. But, above all things, remember that dullness and stupidity—and you will certainly find them in every school—are the very last things to get out of patience with. If the Creator has so formed the mind of a boy that he must go through life slowly and with difficulty, impeded by obstructions which others do not feel, and depressed by discouragements which others never know, his lot is surely hard enough without having you to add to it the trials and suffering which sarcasm and reproach from you can heap upon him. Look over your school-room, therefore, and wherever you find one whom you perceive the Creator to have endued with less intellectual power than others, fix your eye upon him with an expression of kindness and sympathy. Such a boy will have suffering enough from the selfish tyranny of his companions; he ought to find in you a protector and friend. One of the greatest enjoyments which a teacher's life affords is the interest of seeking out such a one, bowed down with burdens of depression and discouragement, unaccustomed to sympathy and kindness, and expecting nothing for the future but a weary continuation of the cheerless toils which have imbittered the past; and the pleasure of taking off the burden, of surprising the timid, disheartened sufferer by kind words and cheering looks, and of seeing in his countenance the expression of ease and even of happiness gradually returning.

(3.) The teacher should be interested in all his scholars, and aim equally to secure the progress of all. Let there be no neglected ones in the school-room. We should always remember that, however unpleasant in countenance and manners that bashful boy in the corner may be, or however repulsive in appearance, or unhappy in disposition, that girl, seeming to be interested in nobody, and nobody appearing interested in her, they still have, each of them, a mother, who loves her own child, and takes a deep and constant interest in its history. Those mothers have a right, too, that their children should receive their full share of attention in a school which has been established for the common and equal benefit of all.