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

by Jacob Abbott

(4.) Do not hope or attempt to make all your pupils alike. Providence has determined that human minds should differ from each other for the very purpose of giving variety and interest to this busy scene of life. Now if it were possible for a teacher so to plan his operations as to send his pupils forth upon the community formed on the same model, as if they were made by machinery, he would do so much toward spoiling one of the wisest of the plans which the Almighty has formed for making this world a happy scene. Let it be the teacher's aim to co-operate with, not vainly to attempt to thwart, the designs of Providence. We should bring out those powers with which the Creator has endued the minds placed under our control. We must open our garden to such influences as shall bring forward all the plants, each in a way corresponding to its own nature. It is impossible if it were wise, and it would be foolish if it were possible, to stimulate, by artificial means, the rose, in hope of its reaching the size and magnitude of the apple-tree, or to try to cultivate the fig and the orange where wheat only will grow. No; it should be the teacher's main design to shelter his pupils from every deleterious influence, and to bring every thing to bear upon the community of minds before him which will encourage in each one the development of its own native powers. For the rest, he must remember that his province is to cultivate, not to create.

Error on this point is very common. Many teachers, even among those who have taken high rank through the success with which they have labored in the field, have wasted much time in attempting to do what never can be done, to form the character of those brought under their influence after a certain uniform model, which they have conceived as the standard of excellence. Their pupils must write just such a hand, they must compose in just such a style, they must be similar in sentiment and feeling, and their manners must be formed according to a fixed and uniform model; and when, in such a case, a pupil comes under their charge whom Providence has designed to be entirely different from the beau ideal adopted as the standard, more time, and pains, and anxious solicitude is wasted in vain attempts to produce the desired conformity than half the school require beside.

(5.) Do not allow the faults or obliquities of character, or the intellectual or moral wants of any individual of your pupils to engross a disproportionate share of your time. I have already said that those who are peculiarly in need of sympathy or help should receive the special attention they seem to require; what I mean to say now is, do not carry this to an extreme. When a parent sends you a pupil who, in consequence of neglect or mismanagement at home, has become wild and ungovernable, and full of all sorts of wickedness, he has no right to expect that you shall turn your attention away from the wide field which, in your whole school-room, lies before you, to spend your time, and exhaust your spirits and strength in endeavoring to repair the injuries which his own neglect has occasioned. When you open a school, you do not engage, either openly or tacitly, to make every pupil who may be sent to you a learned or a virtuous man. You do engage to give them all faithful instruction, and to bestow upon each such a degree of attention as is consistent with the claims of the rest. But it is both unwise and unjust to neglect the many trees in your nursery which, by ordinary attention, may be made to grow straight and tall, and to bear good fruit, that you may waste your labor upon a crooked stick, from which all your toil can secure very little beauty or fruitfulness.

Let no one now understand me to say that such cases are to be neglected. I admit the propriety, and, in fact, have urged the duty, of paying to them a little more than their due share of attention. What I now condemn is the practice, of which all teachers are in danger, of devoting such a disproportionate and unreasonable degree of attention to them as to encroach upon their duties to others. The school, the whole school, is your field, the elevation of the mass in knowledge and virtue, and no individual instance, either of dullness or precocity, should draw you away from its steady pursuit.

(6.) The teacher should guard against unnecessarily imbibing those faulty mental habits to which his station and employment expose him. Accustomed to command, and to hold intercourse with minds which are immature and feeble compared with our own, we gradually acquire habits that the rough collisions and the friction of active life prevent from gathering around other men. Narrow-minded prejudices and prepossessions are imbibed through the facility with which, in our own little community, we adopt and maintain opinions. A too strong confidence in our own views on every subject almost inevitably comes from never hearing our opinions contradicted or called in question, and we express those opinions in a tone of authority, and even sometimes of arrogance, which we acquire in the school-room, for there, when we speak, nobody can reply.

These peculiarities show themselves first, and, in fact, most commonly, in the school-room; and the opinions thus formed very often relate to the studies and management of the school. One has a peculiar mode of teaching spelling, which is successful almost entirely through the magic influence of his interest in it, and he thinks no other mode of teaching this branch is even tolerable. Another must have all his pupils write on the angular system, or the anti-angular system, and he enters with all the zeal into a controversy on the subject, as if the destiny of the whole rising generation depended upon its decision. Tell him that all that is of any consequence in any handwriting is that it should be legible, rapid, and uniform, and that, for the rest, it would be better that every human being should write a different hand, and he looks upon you with astonishment, wondering that you can not see the vital importance of the question whether the vertex of an o should, be pointed or round. So in every thing. He has his way in every minute particular—a way from which he can not deviate, and to which he wishes every one else to conform.

This set, formal mannerism is entirely inconsistent with that commanding intellectual influence which the teacher should exert in the administration of his school. He should work with what an artist calls boldness and freedom of touch. Activity and enterprise of mind should characterize all his measures if he wishes to make bold, original, and efficient men.

(7.) Assume no false appearances in your school either as to knowledge or character. Perhaps it may justly be said to be the common practice of teachers in this country to affect a dignity of deportment in the presence of their pupils which in other cases is laid aside, and to pretend to superiority in knowledge and an infallibility of judgment which no sensible man would claim before other sensible men, but which an absurd fashion seems to require of the teacher. It can, however, scarcely be said to be a fashion, for the temptation is almost exclusively confined to the young and the ignorant, who think they must make up by appearance what they want in reality. Very few of the older, and more experienced, and successful instructors in our country fall into it at all; but some young beginner, whose knowledge is very limited, and who, in manner and habits, has only just ceased to be a boy, walks into his school-room with a countenance of forced gravity, and with a dignified and solemn step, which is ludicrous even to himself. I describe accurately, for I describe from recollection. This unnatural, and forced, and ludicrous dignity cleaves to him like a disease through the whole period of his duty. In the presence of his scholars he is always under restraint, assuming a stiff and formal dignity which is as ridiculous as it is unnatural. He is also obliged to resort to arts which are certainly not very honorable to conceal his ignorance.

A scholar, for example, brings him a sum in arithmetic which he does not know how to perform. This may be the case with a most excellent teacher, and one well qualified for his business. In order to be successful as a teacher, it is not necessary to understand every thing. Instead, however, of saying frankly, "I do not understand that example; I will examine it," he looks at it embarrassed and perplexed, not knowing how he shall escape the exposure of his ignorance. His first thought is to give some general directions to the pupil, and send him to his seat to make a new experiment, hoping that in some way or other, he scarcely knows how, he will get through; and, at any rate, if he should not, the teacher thinks that he himself at least gains time by the manoeuvre, and he is glad to postpone his trouble, though he knows it must soon return.

All efforts to conceal ignorance, and all affectation of knowledge not possessed, are as unwise as they are dishonest. If a scholar asks a question which you can not answer, or brings you a difficulty which you can not solve, say frankly, "I do not know." It is the only way to avoid continual anxiety and irritation, and the surest means of securing real respect. Let the scholars understand that the superiority of the teacher does not consist in his infallibility, or in his universal acquisitions, but in a well-balanced mind, where the boundary between knowledge and ignorance is distinctly marked; in a strong desire to go forward in mental improvement, and in fixed principles of action and systematic habits. You may even take up in school a study entirely new to you, and have it understood at the outset that you know no more of it than the class commencing, but that you can be their guide on account of the superior maturity and discipline of your powers, and the comparative ease with which you can meet and overcome difficulties. This is the understanding which ought always to exist between master and scholars. The fact that the teacher does not know every thing can not long be concealed if he tries to conceal it, and in this, as in every other case, HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY.