MANNER of Teaching

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Directions as to the MANNER in which a teacher should discharge the duties of his office

Having disclosed to you the ultimate object of your exertions, and prescribed the qualifications necessary for accomplishing it, I shall now lay down some directions for the regulation of your conduct.

1. There should be a discriminating attention to the different capacities, and tempers of the children.

A Sunday School may be considered as a plantation of young minds, the plants of which grow in different ways, and blossom at various times; each of them requiring a method of culture adapted to its nature. Some need to be brought forward to the sun; others to be thrown back into the shade. Some need to have their luxuriant growth repressed; others to have it encouraged.

Children vary exceedingly in their capacities for learning. Perception is more quick, memory more retentive, comprehension more enlarged in some than in others. What would be industry in one, would be indolence in another. Of this the teacher should be aware, lest by expecting the same in both cases, he produce despondency in the former, or nourish idleness in the latter. Nothing is more discouraging throughout the whole range of education, than to have the mind put upon exertions to which its faculties are unequal. The spirit, in such a case, like a horse that has sunk beneath his burden, lies down in despair, with scarce a struggle to rise. It is of immense importance that you should know the real capacity of your children, and that you should never require of them impossibilities. You will often need much penetration to discriminate between a lack of inclination, and a lack of ability—this, however, may be easily acquired.

The temper, as well as the mind, will require the same judicious attention. Some are timid, and will need great pains to produce more confidence in themselves; others are forward, and must be assiduously taught to be more cautious. Some are open and sincere; others are artful and deceptive. Sometimes you will find a child of such tenderness, that harshness would be like training the sensitive plant with a bar of iron; and then again you will meet with such hard incorrigible stubbornness in another child, that a lenient softness would be like tying down the branches of the mountain oak with a silken thread. Study then the character of the children. Minds, like locks, are different—the same key will not open them all, yet a skillful locksmith may be open them all.

It is astonishing what may be effected in the work of education, by a little ingenuity and invention. There are some teachers who have a certain medication which they administer in every case. They never vary the application—a command, a threat, and a blow; and if this does not succeed, the case is abandoned as too desperate. Whereas a little variation in the mode of treatment, would have carried the point, and ensured success. We need more ingenuity in the business of education. To a certain extent, you should be experimentalists upon the human mind; and when you meet with a case which ordinary methods do not reach, you should call to your assistance the powers of invention, and try the effect of new measures. I will here insert two anecdotes illustrative of my meaning.

Mr. Raikes was in the habit of visiting the parents and children belonging to his schools at their own houses. He called on a poor woman one day, and found a very refractory girl crying, and sulking. Her mother complained that correction was of no avail, and that an inflexible obstinacy marked her conduct. After asking the parent's permission, he began to talk seriously to the girl, and concluded by telling her, that as the first step towards amendment, she must kneel down and ask her mother's pardon. The girl continued sulky. "Well then (said he), if you have no regard for yourself, I have much regard for you. You will be ruined, and lost, if you do not begin to be a good girl; and if you will not humble yourself, I must humble myself, and make a beginning for you." With that he knelt down on the ground before the child's mother, and put his hands together with all the ceremony of a juvenile offender, and supplicated pardon for the guilty daughter. No sooner did the stubborn girl see him on his knees on her account, than her pride was overcome at once, and tenderness followed; she burst into tears, and throwing herself on her knees, entreated forgiveness; and what is still more pleasing, she gave no trouble afterwards.

What would many people have done in this instance? uttered a scolding threat, and left the girl the miserable victim of her own bad temper. A little ingenuity effected a rescue, for which, perhaps, this child blesses the name of Raikes to the present hour.

Mr. Lancaster had once under his care a boy of most indolent and intractable habits, on whom the ordinary methods of punishment produced no effect. He resolved, as the case seemed almost desperate, to try an experiment. He placed him as monitor over an inferior class, and in order more effectually to awaken a feeling of interest, and excite a habit of application, he opposed this class to another in a contest, proposing a reward to the monitor, whose class was victorious. The experiment succeeded to admiration. Ambition was excited in the boy's mind. During the probationary week he was every morning at school in good time, urging on his class to the most vigorous exertions. His truant habits were now broken; and rewarded by success, he became from that time a pattern of industry.

By teachers less versed in the art of instruction, this boy would have been given up as incorrigible. You perceive what I mean byingenuity and invention, in education. Cultivate it. Indolence may sometimes be excited, where it cannot be driven. And one vice, where it cannot be forcibly and immediately eradicated, may be starved and withered in the shadow of some opposite virtue, which a skillful, and assiduous gardener may raise against it.

2. Exercise great judgment in the application of rewards and punishments.

I am not now going to propose any particular kind of rewards, and punishments, as this little volume is not intended to regulate the formation of schools, but is addressed to teachers in their individual capacity, who are already engaged in supporting the order and arrangements of the school, to which they belong. My remarks will therefore apply to the subject generally.

The proper application of rewards, and punishments, is the most difficult part of the business of instruction. To perceive the first germinations, either of excellence or vice, when the former needs most to be encouraged, and the latter may be most easily destroyed, requires a most watchful and discriminating eye. To nourish merit by reward, and at the same time not to promote the growth of pride and selfishness, which are so apt to spring up by its side by the forcing heat of excessive commendation, requires uncommon skill; and no less judgment is necessary in the case of punishment, lest by pulling up some noxious weeds with too violent a hand, we tear with it some better plant.

With respect to REWARD, I should advise that as much as possible you deduce it from a child's own feelings. External stimulants, I am aware, are sometimes necessary. Indolence must often be roused by the proposal of a prize, the value of which ignorance and insensibility can comprehend. Anything is an advantage where everything else fails, which moves the stagnant dullness of some minds. But as a system, I recommend you, as much as possible, to make your children a reward to themselves. By a little pains you may make them sensible of the pleasures of good behavior, and the vast advantages of knowledge. When they have succeeded in a lesson, or an effort at good conduct, send them to their own bosom for a rewarding smile, and endeavor to make them sensible of the value of such rewards. By this means you are carrying on a system of moral education, by elevating the tribunal, and strengthening the authority of conscience. This powerful principle is often totally neglected in the business of instruction. Its dictates are scarcely ever enforced, its authority seldom exhibited, and its solemn awards entirely superseded—by a bribing, hireling system of mercenary rewards.

In the education of the heart, conscience is the great auxiliary whose aid should be perpetually engaged. When a child has behaved so as to deserve commendation, instead of being judiciously instructed by his teacher in the pleasure of doing right, I acknowledge it is a much more easy method of reward simply to confer a ticket, which at some future day is to be transmuted into money—but it is more than questionable whether it is the most effective method.

I again repeat, I am not for excluding all external rewards, but I enjoin, as preeminently important, an endeavor to produce in the mind of the children, a conviction, that one of the best rewards for doing right, is the pleasure of doing it.

Much the same strain of remark will apply to PUNISHMENT. External chastisement is sometimes necessary. Even corporeal punishment, although it should be excluded as a regular system, may perhaps, in some cases of extremity, be resorted to, like bitter medicines, with success. In all cases of chastisement a teacher should carefully ascertain the degree of crime, and never forget to discriminate between sins of inadvertence and willful depravity. Between the thoughtless follies of childhood, and those actions which are deeply tinctured with moral turpitude, there is a wide difference, of which you should never lose sight. The teacher who in the infliction of punishment, removes all the distinctions which exist between different classes of offence, is in the way of removing, at least in the minds of his children, the natural distinction between right and wrong. Endeavor to keep your owntemper. Never is a cool dispassionate manner more necessary than when administering reproof, or inflicting punishment. Grinding teeth, or flashing eyes, or quivering lips, or angry words, are very unlikely means to bring a child to penitence. They may terrify, but will not melt. They may extort confession but will not produce conviction. Enveloped in the mist of passion, how can you discriminate the precise degree of punishment requisite to produce repentance?

Let chastisement always be attended with an obvious regard to the interest of its subject. No censor is so solemn or so effectual as love; and no reproofs sink so deeply in the heart, as those which fall from the lips of affection. Mercy would soften the mind for the impressions of justice. Where there is a conviction, that you chasten for the children's benefit, and not to gratify your own feelings—submission, if not reformation, will generally follow.

Your great concern in every case of misconduct should be to produce a cordial penitence for the fault. This, so far as the offender is concerned, is the very end of punishment. Without a perception of the impropriety of his conduct, and real sorrow for the offence, whatever punishment a child may receive, no solid basis is laid for reformation; and therefore very little is effected. By calm statement, by mild and forcible expostulation, by an appeal to the understanding and feelings of the children, much, except in cases of almost incorrigible obduracy, may be effected in leading to genuine penitence.

Great pains should be taken in every instance of moral delinquency to convince them that their offence is committed chiefly against God, and not merely in opposition either to the rules of the school, or the will of the teacher. It should be represented as a sin to be confessed to God, and for which there is no pardon, but through the blood of the Savior.

Great judgment should be exercised in endeavoring to conduct the whole business of punishment, in such a manner, as shall be least likely to irritate or exasperate the feelings of the delinquent. Surgeons, when it is necessary to employ the knife, are very careful to keep the whole frame as cool as possible, and to choose a time for operation when the diseased part is least under the power of inflammation. Select your times, and particularly remember not to push the rigors of punishment too far, nor continue them too long. The moment you perceive the mind softened to cordial concern for the fault, and that stubbornness or impenitence has given way to docility or contrition, then is the time for punishment immediately to cease. Beyond this it would be breaking the bruised reed, and nipping the buds of reformation by the chilling influence of despair.

In short, as in the business of reward, so also in the business of punishment—make great use of the children's own feelings. Put the rod into the hand of conscience, and excite a trembling dread of the strokes which are inflicted by this internal censor.

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