The teacher who would improve must, in a good sense, be restless. He must bestir himself. He must study and read and experiment, attend teachers' meetings and conventions, and take teachers' papers, and find out what other teachers are doing and have done, ever remembering that improvement comes mainly by comparison.
XVIII.
LOVING THE CHILDREN.
Some teachers make the mistake of supposing that a love for the work and a love for the children are one and the same thing. The two things are certainly separable in thought, and they are often actually separated in action. It is of some importance to teachers to remember the difference.
We see persons every day struggling with all their might to accomplish certain results. They have certain ideas which they wish to realize, certain theories which they wish to verify. To bring about these results, is a matter of pride with them. So that the end is gained, the means to be used are a matter of comparative indifference. Their heart is set on the result, they care nothing for the machinery by which it is brought about. Now, so long as the work is of a nature which requires only the use of mechanical powers, or of mere brute force, it is all very well. The sculptor need not fall in love with the block of marble on which he is working, in order to realize from it the conception of his mind. The engine which carries us thirty miles an hour towards the goal of our desires, will not speed us more or less for not being an object of our affections. But every man has a natural and proper dislike to becoming a mere machine for carrying out the schemes of others. Children especially revolt at being treated in this way. If a teacher takes the charge of a class or of a school, for the purpose of showing to himself or to others how certain things may be done, the children are quick to find it out, and to resent it. No child, however humble or obscure, but feels indignant at being considered as a mere pawn upon a chess-board, or a mere wheel or pulley in some complicated piece of machinery. Every individual child is to itself the centre of all human interests, and if you are to have any real and abiding influence upon him, he must first feel that you have a regard for himself, in his own proper person, independently of any schemes or plans of your own.
You may love to see your children all present punctually, to see them making a good appearance, and by their orderly behavior and manners helping forward the school generally; you may love the work of teaching as giving you honorable and useful occupation. But something more than this is wanting. You must love the children. You must love each particular child. You must become interested in each child, not for what it is to you, or to the class, or to the school, but for what it is in itself, as a precious jewel, to be loved and admired, for those immortal qualities and capacities which belong to it as a human being. No matter how degraded or depraved or forbidding in appearance that child may be, it has qualities which, if brought out, may make it more glorious than an angel. If Jesus loved him, you may love him. Jesus did not stand off at a distance from the loathsome and filthy leper, while performing the miracle of healing. He first "touched" the leper, and said, "Be thou clean." We are sometimes too fastidious in our benevolence, and shrink too much from coming into contact with those whom we would befriend.
Little real influence is ever produced upon any human being, without creating between you and him a bond of sympathy. If we would work strongly and efficiently upon the minds of children, we must really love them, not in the abstract, not in a general way, but concretely and individually. We must love John and William and Mary and Susie, simply and purely because he or she is, in himself or herself alone, an object of true interest and affection. In looking over a school, it is not difficult to discover at a glance which teachers thus love their children. It speaks in every word from the lips. It beams in every look from the eyes. It thrills in every tone of the voice. It has a language in the very touch of the hand and the movements of the person.
Some persons are naturally more fond of children than others are. But those not naturally thus inclined may cultivate the disposition. They must do so if they mean to be teachers. No one is fitted to be a teacher, who has not learned to sympathize with the real wants and feelings of children. Pretence here is all wasted. Shams may do with grown persons sometimes, never with children. They have an instinctive perception of what is genuine and what is pretended, in professed love for them. In fact, the way to win the affection of a child is to love him, not to make professions of love.
It is not always the easiest thing in the world to exercise this love. A teacher may have the charge of a class of children whose appearance, manners, and dispositions are exceedingly forbidding, perhaps even loathsome. Yet observation and study will ordinarily discover some good quality even in the worst and most degraded. A talent for discovering what is good in a child is much more important in the work of elevating him, than the smartness at detecting and exposing his tricks, in which some teachers take pride. It is a bad sign, though not an uncommon one, to see evidences of cunning in a teacher. Better by far to be outwitted and duped occasionally, than to forfeit that character of perfect sincerity and straightforwardness which secures the confidence of a child. The teacher who would love his children, particularly if he happens to have been entrusted with an unpromising class, must learn to wear the spectacles of charity. He must cultivate the habit of seeing things in their best light. While not blind to faults, he must be prompt and eagle-eyed to spy out every indication of good. Above all, he must remember that no human soul, however degraded, is without some elements and possibilities of good, for whom there is the possibility that Christ died.