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

by Jacob Abbott

"Why not? If you now sincerely determine never more to use a profane word, will you not easily avoid it?"

The boys were silent. Some said faintly, "No, sir."

"It will not be easy for you to avoid the sin hereafter," continued the teacher, "even if you do now sincerely and resolutely determine to do so. You have formed the habit of sin, and the habit will not be easily overcome. But I have detained you long enough now. I will try to devise some method by which you may carry your plan into effect, and to-morrow I will tell you what it is."

So the boys were dismissed for the day; the pleasant countenance and cheerful tone of the teacher conveying to them the impression that they were engaging in the common effort to accomplish a most desirable purpose, in which they were to receive the teacher's help, not that he was pursuing them, with threatening and punishment, into the forbidden practice into which they had wickedly strayed. Great caution is, however, in such a case, necessary to guard against the danger that the teacher, in attempting to avoid the tones of irritation and anger, should so speak of the sin as to blunt his pupils' sense of its guilt, and lull their consciences into a slumber.

At the appointed time on the following day the subject was again brought before the school, and some plans proposed by which the resolutions now formed might be more certainly kept. These plans were readily and cheerfully adopted by the boys, and in a short time the vice of profaneness was, in a great degree, banished from the school.

I hope the reader will keep in mind the object of the above illustration, which is to show that it is the true policy of the teacher not to waste his time and strength in contending against such accidental instances of transgression as may chance to fall under his notice, but to take an enlarged and extended view of the whole ground, endeavoring to remove whole classes of faults—to elevate and improve multitudes together.

By these means, his labors will not only be more effectual, but far more pleasant. You can not come into collision with an individual scholar, to punish him for a mischievous spirit, or even to rebuke him for some single act by which he has given you trouble, without an uncomfortable and uneasy feeling, which makes, in ordinary cases, the discipline of a school the most unpleasant part of a teacher's duty. But you can plan a campaign against a whole class of faults, and put into operation a system of measures to correct them, and watch from day to day the operation of that system with all the spirit and interest of a game. It is, in fact, a game where your ingenuity and moral power are brought into the field, in opposition to the evil tendencies of the hearts which are under your influence. You will notice the success or the failure of the means you may put into operation with all the interest with which the experimental philosopher observes the curious processes he guides, though your interest may be much purer and higher, for he works upon matter, but you are experimenting upon mind.

Remember, then, as for the first time you take your new station at the head of your school, that it is not your duty simply to watch with an eagle eye for those accidental instances of transgression which may chance to fall under your notice. You are to look over the whole ground. You are to make yourself acquainted, as soon as possible, with the classes of character and classes of faults which may prevail in your dominions, and to form deliberate and well-digested plans for improving the one and correcting the other.

And this is to be the course pursued not only with great delinquencies, such as those to which I have already alluded, but to every little transgression against the rules of order and propriety. You can correct them far more easily and pleasantly in the mass than in detail.

To illustrate this principle by another case. A teacher, who takes the course I am condemning, approaches the seat of one of his pupils, and asks to see one of his books. As the boy opens his desk, the teacher observes that it is in complete disorder. Books, maps, papers, play-things, are there in promiscuous confusion, and, from the impulse of the moment, the displeased teacher pours out upon the poor boy a torrent of reproach.