We have dwelt, perhaps, longer on this subject than we ought to have done in this place; but its importance, when viewed in its bearings on the thousands of children daily assembling in our district schools, must be our apology. The embarrassments and difficulties arising from the extreme sensitiveness which exists among the various denominations of Christians in our land, threaten to interfere very seriously with giving a proper degree of religious instruction to the mass of the youthful population. But we must not, because we have no national church, cease to have a national religion. All our institutions ought to be so administered as openly to recognise the hand of God, and to seek his protection and blessing; and in regard to none is it more imperiously necessary than in respect to our common schools.
5. After the school is thus opened, the teacher will find himself brought to the great difficulty which embarrasses the beginning of his labors, i. e. how to find immediate employment at once, for the thirty or forty children who all look up to him waiting for their orders. I say thirty or forty, for the young teacher's first school will usually be a small one. His object, I think, should be, in all ordinary cases, for the first few days, twofold. First, to revive and restore, in the main, the general routine of classes and exercises pursued by his predecessor in the same school. And secondly, while doing this, to become as fully acquainted with his scholars as possible.
It is best then, ordinarily, for the teacher to begin the school as his predecessor closed it, and make the transition to his own perhaps more improved method, a gradual one. In some cases a different course is wise undoubtedly,—as, for example, where a teacher is commencing a private school, on a previously well-digested plan of his own,—or where one who has had experience, and has confidence in his power to bring his new pupils promptly and at once into the system of classification and instruction which he prefers. It is difficult however to do this, and requires a good deal of address and decision; it is far easier and safer, and in almost all cases, better in every respect for a young teacher to revive and restore the former arrangements in the main, and take his departure from them. He may afterwards make changes, as he may find them necessary or desirable, and even bring the school soon into a very different state from that in which he finds it; but it will generally be more pleasant for himself, and better for the school, to avoid the shock of a sudden and entire revolution.
The first thing then, when the scholars are ready to be employed, is to set them at work, in classes or upon lessons, as they would have been employed had the former teacher continued in charge of the school. To illustrate clearly how this may be done, we may give the following dialogue.
Teacher. "Can any one of the boys inform me what was the first lesson that the former master used to hear in the morning?"
The boys are silent, looking to one another.
Teacher. "Did he hear any recitation immediately after school began?"
Boys;—faintly and with hesitation. "No sir."
Teacher. "How long was it before he began to hear lessons?"
Several boys simultaneously. "About half an hour." "A little while." "Quarter of an hour."